


The Iron Forge (Whumptober 2019)

by Assayist



Series: Hero's Alloy [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Allergic reaction, BAMF Peter Parker, BAMF Tony Stark, Forge Master, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Irondad, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Mild Language, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, surgery without anesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2020-11-10 18:36:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 36
Words: 163,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20856374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assayist/pseuds/Assayist
Summary: (A cohesive story written to the 2019 Whumptober prompts.)Peter didn’t think his name deserved to be on the patent next to Mr. Stark’s. And he definitely didn’t think taking the wrong drink at the celebration party would end up involving allergic reactions, surgery, poison, kidnapping, some weirdo calling himself the Forge Master, and his very own version of Mr. Stark’s Afghanistan.Will Peter turn out to be half the inventor Mr. Stark was or will he need to wait for Mr. Stark to come save him? And what will happen when Mr. Stark is threatened and it’s up to Peter to save them both?





	1. Laced Drink

Peter wished he’d brought some homework to do. The tall cocktail tables scattered around him were nearly the same height as the standing desks he sometimes used at the library. Granted, they were barely big enough to hold two textbooks, being meant for dainty drinks, but there were a few in the corner that were unused. He wouldn’t be a bother over there. Right now standing at one of the tables near the edge of the large room, Peter felt like the newest fish in a large aquarium, still trying to make sense of where he was and who was with him. A rather foolishly dressed fish who was still growing into his fins. He’d stuffed Uncle Ben’s old shoes with newspaper to stop them from sliding around, but he felt like he was wearing scuba flippers. At least his pants were a little too long and covered some of them. And don’t even get Peter started on his bow tie, which Mr. Stark had put on him and he couldn’t figure out how to loosen without popping up the collar that had taken him ten minutes to get to lay down flat.

He tugged on the bow tie again as he watched Mr. Stark. He was weaving through tables and mingling effortlessly (looking perfectly at home in his dark gray suit) while a dozen people trailed behind him like a school of fish, trying to laugh and the right moment and get their two cents into the conversation. If this really were an aquarium, Mr. Stark would be a shark that always had tiny fish following him around to clean his teeth and catch rides on his stomach. He glided through the room so confidently, so randomly, and with such a sharp glint in his eyes that Peter wondered if he was spelling out cursive curses to anyone watching the feed from the security cameras in each corner of the ceiling. Yep, definitely a shark.

But if Mr. Stark was a shark at this party, then Peter was a plecostomus, one of those sucker-faced fish that leeched onto the sides of the aquariums eating algae. That’s all Peter wanted to do. Hang out along the walls eating cocktail sausages. (Seriously, could you make anything fancy just by putting the word cocktail in front of it?)

But this was his party too, as Mr. Stark the shark had constantly reminded him. Both their names were on the patent—“Your first real invention, kiddo! This is cause for celebration!”—and he’d already peeled Peter from the walls a half-dozen times tonight to parade him around the social aquarium in the hopes he’d find his footing. Or finning. Whatever. He’d met so many professors and CEOs he’d have to ask Mr. Stark for a set of flashcards to study them all later. Actually, that seemed like the sort of thing Pepper would have. Maybe that’s how Mr. Stark was so good at remembering everyone’s names.

If this was really Peter’s party too, shouldn’t he have had some say in who was invited? Maybe some kids from his school or something? Peter didn’t feel like it was his party. He’d told Mr. Stark the whole thing was being overblown. A new type of aerosol nozzle inspired by his web shooters was hardly going to save lives.

When he’d said as much to Mr. Stark, he’d just clapped him on the back and said, “Doesn’t matter. You’re dipping your toes into the world of innovation and intellectual property. And never discount what someone else can do with your inventions.”

The party was being hosted by the science department of a local college, for which the party was also doubling as a fundraiser. That part, Peter could get behind. They had to have some classrooms or textbooks nearby he could borrow, right? Just for some light learning. He could study at his own party, right? That’s something Mr. Stark would do, bring a personal project to tinker with in the corner. Not that Pepper would let him. But would she stop Peter?

Peter fiddled with his cuffs while he weighed Pepper’s wrath against getting a break from all these people. Before he could decide, Mr. Stark arrived at the table, a good quarter of the aquarium not-so-subtly trailing behind.

“Thanks for riding the Tony train on our most recent laps around the room,” Mr. Stark turned and spoke to the crowd that had bunched up behind him. “The next trip leaves in ten minutes, so get drinks and munchies before then.” He turned his back to them to face Peter completely, and the people drifted away at the obvious dismissal. “How’re you holding up?” He nudged Peter with his elbow. “Haven’t been sneaking drinks, I hope.”

“Of course not!” Peter grabbed his empty glass from the table and shook it, the tiny red and gold charm around the base of the stem that signaled a non-alcoholic drink tinkling against the glass. “Besides, I doubt they’d let me even if I asked. I’m obviously and by far the youngest person here.”

“The youngest and the soberest,” Mr. Stark flicked the glass with a fingernail. “Get used to it. It’s not a bad thing.”

“Sure, sure,” Peter joked. “You’re just saying that because in a few months I can be your designated driver at things like this.”

“And put Happy out of a job? Where’s the loyalty?” He clutched his chest, pantomiming shock.

“Hey, I’d be way nicer to you when I drove you home than he is. He’s grumpy. And mumbles when he talks.” Peter knew that was just his personality, but sometimes it felt personal.

Mr. Stark laughed. “Kid, be glad you don’t know the first thing about helping someone through a hangover. Misery loves company, so Happy’s judgmental near silence is actually a blessing. Your talkative self, on the other hand, would make my head fall off halfway home.”

“I can be quiet when I want,” Peter said, trying not to sound petulant. He’d barely fit a word in edgewise at this party, partly because the adults didn’t seem to value his input, partly because he didn’t dare give it.

“Well, you won’t have to be,” Mr. Stark reassured. “I’m my own designated driver these days. Or could be if Happy weren’t here. You know what I mean.”

“That makes you the oldest and soberest.”

“Soberest by choice, which makes me cooler.”

“Yeah, that’s why people love Iron Man. Because he’s the soberest of the super heroes.” Peter couldn’t keep the smile off his face. Joking with Mr. Stark felt like joking with a friend, not trying to posture for the other fish floating around this evening.

Mr. Stark rolled his eyes. “That’s enough sass for one evening.”

“It’s my party, and I’ll sass if I want to,” Peter said, on a roll.

Mr. Stark must have sensed it and wandered over to a server a few feet away, snagging two pale yellow drinks with green leaves floating in them, and returned to the table. Peter raised an eyebrow, studying the greenery.

Tony sighed. “I know, I know, they were Pepper’s idea. It’s mint lemonade, not a witch’s brew. It’s just mint leaves.”

Peter took the drink, still looking at the leaves. They looked almost fuzzy, tiny bubbles of air clinging to the hairs. “Do you swallow them?”

“What? No. Just leave them in the glass.” Seeing Peter’s hesitation, he added, “You’ll mostly only taste the lemonade.”

It occurred to Peter that his expression probably matched Tony’s. “This whole thing is really Pepper’s party, isn’t it?” Peter said.

Mr. Stark swirled the drink in front of him, looking like he was regretting his choice. “Now you’re catching on.”

Yep. There was no way Pepper would let him get away with textbook studying tonight. He’d have to embrace his party plecostomusness or start taking shark lessons from Mr. Stark. Maybe he could compromise and be a medium-sized creature like a stingray or something. Then people wouldn’t be following him around.

“So, a midnight toast is customary,” Mr. Stark winked. “We can toast our brilliant invention.”

“It was mostly yours,” Peter’s spider sense sprung to life as he spoke, a tiny pulse at the base of his skull. Mr. Stark wouldn’t give him an alcoholic drink, would he? Would his spider sense care?

Mr. Stark didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. He had turned and was comparing his wrist watch to the ornate clock on the wall, which read six minutes past midnight, and was muttering about stupid Rolexes and stupider batteries.

His spider sense twinged harder, and Peter’s hand flinched toward his neck. He looked around, but no one was approaching their table. No one looked at all bothered. Was someone about to trip and break a glass? He focused his hearing on the sounds and conversations around him, hearing nothing out of the ordinary. A particularly loud fly buzzed near his ear, and he swatted it away. When he hand actually made contact, he flinched even harder. He didn’t usually hit flies he was swinging at, and that was a big one. Like, horsefly big. Had he accidentally used super speed? Was anyone watching? Or was this just one of those rare times where the fly had been distracted? That happened to regular people sometimes too, right?

“You okay?” Mr. Stark’s booming voice made him jump again, spilling half of his drink down his hand.

“What? Oh, yeah, I just accidentally hit a fly.” He tried to tone his hearing back down to a normal degree, barely hearing the thunk of Tony putting his drink down on the tablecloth. Well, normal for him.

“Accidentally? Sure looked like you were trying to hit it to me.” Peter rolled his eyes. That felt like a dad joke. Or at least an Uncle Ben joke. Could he tease him about that or would it be weird?

Mr. Stark was giving him a weird look with a hesitant smile. “If you didn’t want to toast, you just had to say so. No need to throw lemonade everywhere.”

“No, I’ll toast. But I was just trying to scare that fly, not kill it.”

“Well that’s what you get for underestimating yourself. Again.” He looked at Peter over the top of his glasses like a stern teacher, obviously referring to their earlier conversations about whether or not Peter deserved to be listed on the patent.

Peter only stammered for a few seconds before clamping his mouth shut. He didn’t want to argue about that anymore. It was a moot point. Instead he put his dripping cup on the table, looking desperately around for a napkin to clean his wet hand. He could already feel the lemonade drying and turning sticky.

Mr. Stark procured an honest-to-goodness handkerchief from his pocket like a grandfather and offered it to Peter. He could definitely tease him about that now, right? “Next time I should go all the way with the non-alcoholic drink and use sippy cups.”

Peter mopped up his hand. “Flypaper would probably be cheaper.” His spider sense was quieter, but still hanging around. Had it really been warning him about a fly? Or that he was going to spill his lemonade? But wait, he’d only spilled his lemonade and hit the fly because he was listening so closely to his spider sense. If it hadn’t gone off, he probably would have been fine. His spider sense was like a self-fulfilling prophecy or something.

“And way less classy,” Mr. Stark interrupted Peter’s whirling thoughts. “And if it ain’t classy, it ain’t mine.” Mr. Stark scooped up Peter’s dripping, sticky glass and dumped it on a passing waiter’s tray. He offered his own untouched drink to Peter. “I’ve just decided that mint lemonade isn’t very classy, despite what Pepper says, so I’m going to grab a sparkling water while you drink this.”

Peter took the glass by habit, still half thinking about his spider sense. Mr. Stark fist bumped the glass once, his wedding ring making a clinking sound against the glass. “Consider yourself toasted, kid,” Mr. Stark said. “Congrats.” He walked away and was immediately swarmed by a group who had apparently been lurking somewhere, waiting for the Tony train to take off again. Being a shark seemed super annoying.

Happy that Mr. Stark hadn’t dragged him around the room again, Peter downed his drink, forgetting what was in it. He gagged on the mint leaf—yep, it was definitely furry—before fishing it out with a finger. Honestly, who put leaves in drinks? How were you supposed to leave the leaf in the glass? What not at least chop them up first so they didn’t get stuck? He dropped it back into the empty cup, wiping his hand on the handkerchief again. Grandfatherly or not, the handkerchief was coming in pretty handy. Maybe he’d start carrying one around. Except now that the cloth was pretty well saturated with lemonade, he couldn’t just put it back in his pocket. What did one do with sopping handkerchiefs? He could leave it on the table or Mr. Stark would never see it again. Would he want it back smelling like lemons? Or should Peter take it home and wash it first? Man, handkerchiefs were such a thing of the past that he really had no clue about the etiquette involved.

He scrunched it up and used his super strength to wring it out over his glass, getting it as dry as possible. Reaching under the table, he draped it over the cross bar underneath where it would be hidden by the drape of the tablecloth. He looked around, remembering what table he’d left it at. He’d pick it up right before the party ended, then take it home to wash and bring back later. Then if Mr. Stark teased him, he’d ask him what the heck the etiquette for borrowed handkerchiefs was.

It was easy enough to drop his cup on one of the passing waiter’s trays like Mr. Stark had, standing on tip-toes to reach as the waiter walked by. The stain on the tablecloth made him wince, but something told him that trying to wring it out and hang it under a table too would summon Pepper out of the corners of the room to tell him off for ruining the unified look of the tables or something. Peter pulled at his bow tie. Pepper made him nervous.

He saw Mr. Stark across the room, signaling him over with a wave of his hand. If he was hoping to get his handkerchief back, Peter would have some explaining to do. He chewed on his tongue as he walked over. It felt like something from the leaf was still in his mouth. It felt scratchy. Itchy. Just his luck he’d get the one mint lemonade with poison ivy or something in it. People should leave leaves to centerpieces, not drinks.

Mr. Stark clapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder as he reached the group. Peter stopped chewing his tongue, not wanting to look nervous, but the itchy feeling had started to spread down his throat. He was never going to touch another mint leaf again, no matter how cute Pepper thought it looked.

“This is my intern, Peter Parker,” Mr. Stark said. “He’s on the patent with me. Was invaluable developing it actually.” Mr. Stark was carrying on gesturing to the people in the group around them, but Peter’s vision had started to go a little fuzzy. He blinked a few times to clear it. This was more than nerves, right? And when had his spider sense started up again? They were getting strong enough to make his dizzy.

A man across from him held out a hand—Peter had been too distracted to hear his name—and Peter shook it. But when he tried to saying something pleasantly neutral like “Nice to meet you” he started coughing instead. Man, his throat was really starting to hurt. And it was getting hard to breathe. He put a hand on a nearby table to brace himself as he coughed, and Mister Stark clapped him on the back a few times. Peter tried to loosen his bow tie again accidentally ripping it right off his neck. Nice, Parker. That’s a thing regular people do.

“You alright, kid?” Mr. Stark said beside him. It was getting hard to drag in a decent breath in between his fits. He waved a hand at the group in a sort of wordless acknowledgment and apology. Bet Mr. Stark was glad he’d brought him to this party. He was making a great first impression. He glanced up at him expecting a look of embarrassment of disappointment. All he caught was a blurry look of concern before his knees buckled.

The tablecloth stuck to his hands—oops—and then the whole table came crashing down over him. The table that bounced off him was light, but a few partially-filled glasses crashed to the floor around him where he’d landed on his side. He saw Mr. Stark’s arms tangled in the table cloth from when he’d tried to grab Peter before he fell. He threw the cloth over his shoulder, knocking over a passing waiter’s tray. More crashing glasses.

Through his blurred vision, he could see people’s feet approaching and groaned. He’d really ruined Pepper’s party now. Forget sharks and sting rays, this was how a fish out of water must feel.

Peter didn’t like it one bit.


	2. Adrenaline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His lungs felt like they’d shrunk three sizes since he’d fallen. It was like breathing through a straw.  
Kind of like his old asthma attacks now that he thought about it. But nothing else was the same. 
> 
> (To be read in an old-timey TV announcer voice)  
Will Spider-man be done in by a glass of mint lemonade?!  
Tune in tomorrow and the next day for the rest of the story! Duhn, duhn, duhn!

Mr. Stark’s shout echoed uncomfortably in Peter’s ears, vying with the ringing of his spider sense for center stage. “Someone get me Helen Cho!”

Peter was surprised she wasn’t already kneeling over him since he’d seen her at the party earlier. Sometimes it felt like she had a sixth sense for medical emergencies. A doctor sense not unlike his spider sense. Or maybe it was just common sense once you knew the things she did. Whatever it was, he hoped she hadn't left the party early.

Hands on his shoulder turned Peter from his side to his back, he closed his eyes as the blurry swirling of the world around him making his stomach turn over unhappily. Yep, moving was definitely bad. He’d prefer to lie perfectly still until the party was over, thank you very much. He’d also prefer to have his bow-tie stop choking him, but one thing at a time.

Mr. Stark patted his cheek. “Wake up, kid.”

“Never went to sleep,” Peter mumbled, the few words using his entire oxygen supply. He’d been dizzy enough to fall over, but he hadn’t blacked out or anything. His mind still felt mostly clear, although the bow-tie was making things worse. It felt like it was getting tighter, slowly shrinking around his neck like a noose. His eyes popped open and his hands scrabbled at his neck, fingers too clumsy to get a good grip.

Mr. Stark seemed to understand and popped up Peter’s collar. Reaching behind, he undid the clasp and pulled it off.

It was a little better. Although that was going to be a pain to put on again later. Maybe Mr. Stark would let him keep it off for the rest of the party.

Wait, he was lying on the floor in the middle of a crowd. Was there even going to be a “rest of the party” for anyone? Oh boy, Pepper was going to be so mad. She’d put so much work into this party.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Mr. Stark kept his voice low, glancing at the crowd around them.

“Hard to breathe,” Peter whispered. “Just got dizzy…and that stupid…leaf got stuck.” Talking felt strange. Like his mouth was slowly changing shape. And it still itched like mad.

“Stuck? Do you need the Heimlich or something? Wait, you’re talking, so no.”

“No, I got it out,” Peter gasped. “Then just started…feeling weird…sorry about…Pepper’s party…and…” And for spilling the drink. And for the handkerchief. And for knocking over a table and breaking a dozen glasses. And for making a scene in front of Tony’s colleagues.

He realized he was still muttering “Sorry…sorry” in between shallow breaths and cut himself off.

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Mr. Stark said. “Compared to the party interruptions Pep usually deals with, this is a walk in the park.”

A loud disturbance in the forest of legs around him made Peter flinch, although his spider sense dropped back a notch. Helen Cho’s sensible heels and long white gown pushed through the crowd. She dropped to her knees next to Peter, looking all business.

“What happened?”

“He start looking a little pale, then he just collapsed,” Mr. Stark said as Peter heaved in another breath, grateful he didn’t have to waste the air speaking for himself. It felt like the Hulk was sitting on his chest. “Said he got dizzy and felt sick.”

“Did he pass out?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Know next time,” she said. “Have Happy bring the car around now. We’ll take him to the Tower.”

She put a cold hand to the pulse point at Peter’s wrist and looked at her watch.

Mr. Stark pulled out his phone, greeting Happy with a curt, “Get the limo to the front now. Peter needs medical.” He walked off into the crowd calling for Pepper, but Peter wished he’d stayed. Who was going to explain things for him now? His lungs felt like they’d shrunk three sizes since he’d fallen. It was like breathing through a straw. Kind of like his old asthma attacks now that he thought about it. But nothing else was the same.

Cho drew his attention with a snap of her fingers. “Hey, Peter,” she said. “Nod if you can hear me.”

He dragged his chin to the ceiling twice before exhausting himself and needing more air.

“Good. I need to know some symptoms. Mr. Stark said you feel dizzy?”

One drag of the chin. One drag of air.

“Does your mouth feel itchy or like it’s burning?”

More and more every minute. Another drag for each.

“Stomachache?”

Three for three. More drags.

“Feel like you’re going to throw up?”

He paused. Probably not? Especially if he wasn’t moving. But it was a possibility. He shrugged, which in hindsight took way more energy than it was worth.

Mr. Stark materialized at his side again, a comforting hand on his arm. “Happy’ll be here in four minutes,” he said to Cho. “What do you think it is?”

Peter’s next breath came with an audible wheeze, making Mr. Stark wince.

Cho’s hand pushed the sleeve of Peter’s shirt back as she spoke. “Quick pulse, dizziness, difficulty breathing, and he’s starting to get hives.” She lifted his wrist slightly, but Peter was too tired to crane his head forward to look. His muscles were feeling weak from lack of oxygen, like his body was conserving it wherever it could.

“It looks a lot like anaphylactic shock,” Cho said matter-of-factly. “An allergic reaction. Peter, do you have any allergies?”

He shook his head twice, letting it loll to the side when he couldn’t drag it back up to center. The more correct answer was not anymore. Not since the spider bite. But he definitely hadn’t had any shellfish tonight.

Cho gently reset his head, stretching out his neck to made breathing a hair more possible. “Okay, what did you have to eat or drink tonight?”

“Apple juice,” Peter wheezed out. “Some little…hot dogs things…Like, a lot…that stupid leaf drink.” His jaw tightened for a second of its own accord, almost making Peter bite his tongue.

“I gave him a mint lemonade a few minutes ago,” Mr. Stark clarified. “I didn’t see any food around him.”

“No alcohol?”

Mr. Stark gave her a withering stare. “No.”

“Just covering my bases. That peppermint lemonade is our leading suspect then.”

“Pepper’s never going to hear the end of this,” Mr. Stark chuckled darkly. “Want me to go arrest it for further questioning?” Peter would have laughed if he’d had the breath.

A ripple through the forest of legs around him coincided with his spider sense ratcheting up about five notches and his jaw clenching again. His next two breaths were sucked in through his teeth.

“The paramedics are here!” someone called from the crowd.

Odd, he hadn’t heard the sirens from the ambulance. Was something wrong with his hearing?

Mr. Stark cursed under his breath, shifting his hand protectively to Peter’s shoulder. “Dammit. Who called 911?”

“Could have been anyone here, Tony.”

“He can’t go to a regular hospital. We should have announced that we had this under control. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes ago.” Mr. Stark checked his watch before apparently remembering it was broken and pulled a slightly shaking hand down his face. “Of all the days for them to knock their average response time out of the park.”

“They’ll at least have supplies for us, even if most medicine doesn’t work for him,” Cho whispered as the men approached.

A new voice boomed near Peter’s head, making him flinch. “Someone called 911 about a man who collapsed and we were the closest unit…” He trailed off slowly.

Peter looked up to see a man carrying a stretcher under his arm and another bearing a small medical bag. Unless they had a new set of lungs for him, Peter wasn’t sure how anything that could fit in it was going to help.

They both stood there awkwardly until Cho asked sharply, “Do you have epinephrine?”

“W-what?” Stretcher EMT stuttered.

“Epi-pens! For anaphylactic shock! For allergies!” Cho nearly yelled as she over-enunciated.

“Oh, yeah,” Bag EMT volunteered. “I think there’s some in the back of the truck.” Peter’s jaw slammed shut again, catching a piece of his cheek. He tried to breathe through his teeth again as an iron trickle of blood worked its way down his throat.

“You think?” She asked scathingly. “Well, go find them and bring me at least four. As many as you can find.”

“I thin—I mean, more than one at a time isn’t advised.”

“Are you his physician?” She asked without waiting for an answer. “Didn’t think so. He’s built up an incredible tolerance, so one won’t be enough.”

That’s one way to put freaky spider powers that metabolized most medicine super fast. Honestly, he doubted four would make much of a difference. He’d quadrupled his Advil dosage early into his spider powers, and it had still done almost nothing. These days he just powered through most things. But he didn’t think there was a good way to power through not breathing. Or having your jaw randomly try to cut your tongue off.

“We’ll take him to the truck and treat him on the way to the hospital.” Stretcher EMT seemed to have found his voice again, although Peter’s spider sense flared at his suggestion. A regular hospital would be all sorts of bad for him.

Mr. Stark apparently had the same opinion. His grip on Peter’s shoulder tightened.

“No,” Cho said firmly. “We’re taking him to a private facility in three minutes, but we need epi now. Stark will reimburse you for any supplies we need. We’ll even call the hospital and get things sorted with your bosses.”

“Yeah, as soon as Happy pulls that damn car around,” Mr. Stark glanced at his watch urgently before cursing and looking to the wall clock.

Stretcher EMT hesitated for a minute, then turned and ran toward the entrance.

Cho stood up and snatched the bag from Bag EMT, who was still looking a little shell-shocked, and zipped it open.

What kind of rookie EMTs were these to still be standing there? There weren’t even any bloody wounds to get freaked out about. Just a kid who was gasping on the floor like a fish out of water, probably starting to turn blue.

Peter’s jaw finally loosened from its latest audition to be a vice in Mr. Stark’s workshop, and he threw his mouth open wide, hoping it would capture more air for him.

Cho dug through the medical bag, yelling almost immediately at the EMT, “What kind of useless kit is this? Empty syringes? Expired burn cream? Half a set of outdated table restraints? Four dozen gauze bandages? Useless!” She threw the bag away from her.

Peter could feel all his muscles working overtime to draw air in, but they exhausted themselves when his lungs were barely half-full.

The trickle of blood from his cheek tickled his throat. A single weak cough was enough to expel some of the blood from his mouth onto his cheek, and probably his white shirt. Hopefully the EMTs wouldn’t see it. They might faint on the spot.

Mr. Stark’s frightened gasp made Peter feel bad. Maybe he should have just swallowed it. But even thinking about that made him tired.

“Cho, he’s coughing blood! And that rash thing is on his neck too!”

Cho whisked a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff from around the neck of Bag EMT as she yelled, “Get me a pulse oximeter, stat!”

She wrapped the cuff around Peter’s arm and inflated it. “Low enough for shock but probably not for internal bleeding.”

She prodded a finger in Peter’s mouth with a curious look, yelping as his jaw clenched again and almost got her.

“Jaw clenching is an unusual symptom but not unheard of. He’s probably just bitten his cheek.”

“Probably?” Mr. Stark pushed, but just then Stretcher EMT came racing back, dumping a handful of epi-pens into Cho’s waiting hands. She immediately uncapped two and threw the caps aside.

Peter felt a sharp pain in his thigh as she shoved them against his leg, counting quietly. His oxygen-deprived muscles barely flinched.

She uncapped two more and injected them too. Peter felt a small drop of blood slide down one leg as she drew the needles away.

“We really should be en route to the hospital by now,” Stretcher EMT said.

“No, we have our own facilities for him,” Cho responded without even glancing up.

He knelt next to Peter, pulling at his suit coat and trying to navigate his arm out of it. “We should at least take his jacket off and roll him on his side.” Peter’s limbs were too weak to protest, but his spider sense screamed loud enough he was sure Cho could hear it.

“He’s not unconscious yet.” She swatted his hands away as Bag EMT returned with a pulse oximeter that Cho immediately clipped onto his left index finger. It started beeping angrily after only a few seconds.

“What can I do to help?” Mr. Stark asked.

Keeping asking the important questions, Peter thought as he sucked in another breath. Every muscle in his throat was straining, like it thought his lungs were just slacking and they could help make up the difference. But the faint whistle that came along with his weak inhale spoke of a deeper problem.

“Keep him calm. Talk to him. Try and gauge basic comprehension levels. Tell me if he passes out. Tell Happy to hurry up.”

“Don’t worry, kid,” Mr. Stark said, moving his head closer to fill more of Peter’s vision. “Happy’s a pro at getting me out of party’s at a moment’s notice. He’ll be here any second.”

Peter’s vision blurred, Mr. Stark’s worried face smearing a little.

“Kid? Can you understand me?”

Peter really wanted to nod. Really wanted to tell Mr. Stark he was doing great and shouldn’t disappear again because then who would ask all the questions he didn’t have to air to ask?

“Kid?”

He was just too tired to think about anything besides breathing. And maybe the itching and burning in his mouth and throat that had started up again with a vengeance.

“Is that epi kicking in, Peter?” Cho asked, still sounding calm despite being up to her elbows in the med kit she’d deemed useless before. “It should make breathing easier.”

Well, breathing had been the same amount of impossible for a few minutes, so maybe? It felt like it was getting worse slower. But it definitely hadn’t gotten any easier. Did that mean he needed to say yes or no? Could he even communicate either one if he wanted to?

It felt like his heart was beating faster, if that mattered at all, but he definitely didn’t have the air to explain that. His mouth was burning so much he wasn’t even sure he could feel his tongue.

“Peter? Peter!” Mr. Stark snapped his fingers a few times, making Peter blink. He shrugged his shoulders to their earlier question, but everything was so tired he wasn’t even sure it was noticeable.

“Why won’t he answer?”

“No answer is an answer.” Peter thought he should feel worried by Cho’s brisker tone, but he couldn’t quite make sense of the words’ implications.

“Oxygen saturation is still dropping. Go and get me anything you’d use to treat anaphylactic shock and respiratory arrest. Expected difficult airway. We’ll need to attempt an intubation.” Cho was talking to someone. Not to Peter, right?

Loud footsteps trailed away from Peter, followed by Cho’s shouted, “and bring me a scalpel!”

That shook Peter out of his daze. A scalpel? What on earth was she going to do with a scalpel?

“What the hell do you need a scalpel for?” Good ole’ Mr. Stark and his apparent ability to share Peter's brain and intuit his biggest concerns.

“Hopefully nothing,” Cho said. “It’s a last resort, stop-gap sort of thing. I doubt they’ll have a full cric kit, know where to find it if they have one.” She muttered something in Korean, then carried on in quiet English. Peter only half listened. Mr. Stark could pay attention to the important stuff, right? He could just focus on breathing?

“Ideal intubation conditions mean sedatives and neuromuscular blocking agents to prevent a gag reflex, but they won’t have anything that will work on him.” She sounded like she was quoting a textbook. How did doctors remember so much at once?

“We’ll make do without because we need to intubate before his airway closes completely from the swelling. Increased risk of aspiration by…a lot…but that’s a risk we need to take. A cric will be the last resort if intubation fails.”

“I understood about 40% of that,” Mr. Stark said, “but none of it sounded good.” Peter was impressed. He felt like he’d only understood about 20%. But maybe that was because everything in his brain felt like it was making half as much sense as it usually did.

“It’s not,” Cho stated. “We just need to hope that epi puts a dent in whatever this is. There’s still time for it to take effect.”

How long could he last if it didn’t take effect? He knew he could hold his breath longer than most people now. Was that a spider thing? How long could spiders hold their breath? Did they ever have to try?

He’d never actually timed himself though. Once, in a rough spot when a mugger had tried to garrote him, he’d fought them off while holding his breath for almost a whole minute.

But it had already been longer than a minute. Granted he wasn’t holding his breath yet, although it felt like that moment might not be too far off. What was the conversion rate between seconds spent not breathing and seconds spent almost not breathing?

Too complicated, that’s what it was.

“What if it’s not an allergy? Aren’t epi-pens just for allergies?” Mr. Stark was proving to be a great mouthpiece. Now he was asking questions Peter hadn’t even thought of before. Or maybe he had but had forgotten? Man, brains with not enough oxygen were confusing.

“Epinephrine is just adrenaline,” Cho said. “It can help with blood pressure regardless of the cause.”

The approach of pounding footsteps and the clatter of plastic and metal on the floor drew Peter’s eyes. Cho was kneeling, medical supplies covering her lap, her hands in the air, a look of pure disgust on her face. “What the hell? You’ve never heard of an orderly operating room before?!”

She was already working at sorting through the supplies before Bag EMT could wipe the shocked expression off his face and respond. “Hey! It was orderly inside the truck! If we were doing this our way—”

He was interrupted by a series of loud car horns out front.

“Finally!” Mr. Stark groaned.

“Help me get him on the stretcher.”

“Hey! That’s ours!”

“Send Stark an invoice!”

After the quickest count to three Peter could remember, hands lifted him up and shifted him to the side. His stomach flip-flopped threateningly, and he could feel his arms flapping around uselessly, even as he tried to pull them into his chest.

Happy’s face appeared over him, upside-down and breathing hard. “The limo’s out front. What happened?”

“We need to get moving,” Cho instructed. “You two carry the stretcher to the back of the limo. I’ll be ready in twenty seconds.”

As they lifted him up, Peter could see Cho picking up an armful of medical supplies from the pile around her while yelling something at the EMTs.

The crowd that had been gathered around them was being held back single-handedly by a poised-looking Pepper Potts, but her glances behind her toward Peter betrayed her worry.

He saw the EMTs ambulance behind the limo, its lights dark and sirens silent. As they shifted him into the limo, his spider sense dimmed a little. Did that mean there was something right with the world now or wrong with his spider sense?

A car door opened, and Peter’s stretcher was slid into the back, reaching across both side seats like a bridge. Mr. Stark slid in next to him and the driver’s door opened and closed quickly.

Peter stared at the ceiling, his vision going blurry, then clear, the blurry again. His jaw clenched periodically, his breathing down to a whisper. It was a nice ceiling. Blue LED strips along the time. A classy pattern etched in the leather. He hadn’t even noticed on the way over. Why was he noticing it now? It felt like he had more important things to be thinking about, but he couldn’t remember what.

It would come back to him. It always did.


	3. Asphyxiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The swerving of the car as it tore down the road combined with the streetlights that flashed by the windows every few seconds were making Peter’s stomach spin and his head pound. But it felt like he wasn’t working as hard to breathe. Was he actually breathing better or were his muscles giving up?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the new tag.
> 
> See end notes for more medical content warning details.

The limo vibrated underneath them like a cheetah coiled with energy before it sped off. Waiting for something? Someone? Peter couldn’t remember. He couldn’t imagine having so much energy as he tried to draw breath with exhausted muscles. His entire body felt like a massive weight, far too heavy even for Spider-Man to shift. 

With his eyes closed, the only thing that distracted him from his throat and lungs apparently going on strike were the voices and words that crashed into each other above Peter like a traffic accident. 

“Peter? Peter!”

“We ready to go boss?”

“No, Cho’s taking her sweet time. Peter!”

“How’s he doing?”

“Hell if I know!”

Something was shaking his shoulders, but it wasn’t worth the effort to tell them to stop. He was starting to lose feeling in his arms anyway. His head lolled to the side and he didn’t have the energy to turn it back to the ceiling.

Someone else slid into the limo and slammed the door shut behind them. The limo shot forward with a honking cry, nearly rolling Peter off the stretcher. 

He slammed roughly into Mr. Stark, who grunted, then hefted him back onto the stretcher. “Should have grabbed those table restraints,” he muttered.

A clanging of metal and Mr. Stark’s affronted grunt signified Cho throwing said restraints in his face. 

“Put those on his ankles. They only had two, so you’ll have to hold his arms.” Peter thought he felt something moving by his feet, but he wasn’t sure. Most feeling seemed to have retreated to his chest and head. 

“He passed out while you were gone. How bad is that?”

“What?! How long ago?”

“Um, I don’t know. A minute? Maybe less than that?”

“You had one job, Stark.” The annoyance in the voice woke Peter up a little. Was Mr. Stark in trouble? “This is something you should know by the second. When someone passes out or starts seizing, we start timing.”

“But my watch is broken!”

“And that made you forget how to count?”

Mr. Stark was clearly losing this argument, even though Peter hadn’t even passed out on his watch. He couldn’t let him get into trouble. Well, more trouble than we was already in.

He pried his eyes half open and stared blearily at Mr. Stark, who smiled and pointed at him triumphantly. “Ah ha! Not passed out. Not in trouble, so stop yelling at me.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a real medical team,” Cho whispered, pulling a long tube from a pile next to her and draping it over Peter’s chest. She leaned over Peter, slipping her hand into his. 

“Peter, if you can understand me, we’re going to intubate you. We’ll put this tube down your throat to keep it open and help you breathe. It’ll be uncomfortable, but just try to relax and not throw up if you can help it. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

He thought he understood, but he couldn’t make his hand contract for the life of him.

“Okay, can you blink twice?”

That he could do. Probably. 

Two slow blinks later, Cho had a hand at the base of his neck, pulling it up so his head leaned back further. 

The swerving of the car as it tore down the road combined with the streetlights that flashed by the windows every few seconds were making Peter’s stomach spin and his head pound. But it felt like he wasn’t working as hard to breathe. Was he actually breathing better or were his muscles giving up?

Working quickly, Cho wedged a tool with a light on the end into his mouth. Peter managed to hold back a gag as it pushed his tongue to the bottom of his mouth. 

Cho picked up the tube and threaded it through the tool. It bumped up against something at the back of his throat, and Peter nearly gagged again. His jaw clenched to stop it, which made the tool bump against something else. 

“Peter, just relax. Stop biting down.”

He managed to work his jaws apart as Cho kept fiddling with the tube, poking at something. After fifteen seconds of nothing, she drew the tube out with a curse, throwing it onto the seat next to her. She grabbed another tube, this one smaller, and tried again. 

“What’s wrong with that one?”

“His airway’s already too narrow, and this is a smaller tube.” 

“I can’t see his chest moving up and down anymore.”

“Might be because of the intubation. Just wait.” It definitely wasn’t because of the intubation. 

His stomach turned again as she probed and this time he couldn’t swallow back his gag reflex. His stomach heaved as bile filled his mouth. He felt the urge to cough as some of it trickled down the wrong tube. 

“Shit, he’s aspirating.” Cho pulled the tube and tool out of his mouth and threw them to the side too. “Roll him onto his right side. Peter, try and cough if you can.” Yep, he was definitely too tired to cough, even though his body was telling him to. 

Hands at his hips and shoulders turned him over as vomit dribbled out of his mouth. Gross. He was never eating cocktail sausages again. 

“Is there a smaller tube?” Mr. Stark asked.

“No, the airway’s almost fully collapsed. At least he probably didn’t aspirate very much.”

“His chest still isn’t moving.”

Cho dropped a hand in front of Peter’s mouth and nose. “He’s barely getting anything, and his oxygen levels are still dropping. Peter, can you breathe at all?” He gave a floppy shake of his head as his jaw clenched again. 

“Then why hasn’t he passed out?”

“Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth,” Cho said as she moved out of Peter’s sight. He heard her banging on the partition and hollering at Happy, “How much longer to the Tower?”

He dropped the partition a little and yelled back, “F.R.I.D.A.Y. says nine minutes.”

“Yep,” Cho said, stepping back into view and nodding decisively. “We’re doing a cric.”

“Wait, that’s what you needed the scalpel for,” Mr. Stark said, his voice sounding appalled and afraid. 

“Yep.” Cho was digging through the pile of medical equipment again, probably trying to find it. Peter wouldn’t mind if she couldn’t. 

“Can’t you wait until he’s got painkillers or something?”

“Not unless you want his brain to die from lack of oxygen,” she snapped. “Average time to brain death with no oxygen is six minutes. He’s probably got longer, based on the fact that he’s still even conscious with a blood oxygen level that low, but I can’t risk it. Nine minutes is too long.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, summoning some semblance of bedside manner from the depths of her soul. “It’s not ideal, but look, he’s obtunded already, which will help with the pain. Oxygen deprivation dulls responses to stimuli like pain.”

“We can’t try the tube again? Why won’t that work?”

“Do you want a lesson on surgical airways or do you want me to save his life?” Apparently bedside manner only went so far.

Mr. Stark held his hands up in surrender. 

“Good. Now give me your jacket.”

Mr. Stark whipped it off and handed it over. Cho balled it up and wedged it under Peter’s neck, forcing it into an even more uncomfortable arch with his neck stretched out. It would have made it even harder to breath. You know, if Peter’s stupid lungs were still even trying. 

“I need his arms and head to be held as still as possible. I need to make an incision in his trachea.”

Mr. Stark pounded on the large partition. “Happy! Turn on the self-driving feature and get back here!” 

“But I’m faster!”

“Not fast enough! Get back here!”

Not ten seconds later, the partition opened up all the way, and Happy tumbled through with a thud, jostling the stretcher and apologizing profusely. 

“Hogan, you hold his arms down so he doesn’t interfere. Stark, you hold his head as still as you can. Like a vise. I shouldn’t have to remind you how many important things there are in a throat that I’ll be trying not to hit.”

Peter barely felt hands press down on his wrists as Happy leaned over him. Mr. Stark moved to the head of the stretcher and leaned over, pressing both his hands and wrists over Peter’s forehead firmly. 

He looked up and Mr. Stark gave him a shaky smile. “Not long now, bud. Cho’s got you.”

“Peter,” Cho chimed in, “if you can hear me, just stay as still as possible. I’m making a small incision in your throat and inserting a tube that will make it possible for you to breathe again. Blink twice if you understood that.” 

Nothing. Had he forgotten how to blink? Or were his eyes closed. Half his vision was obscured by black dots at this point, so what was the point of keeping his eyes open?

“Has he actually passed out? His eyes are still kind of open.”

“Doesn’t matter, we’ve got to get his oxygen levels back up.”

Cho’s fingers pressed painfully on his throat, trying to find whatever it was she was looking for, holding the scalpel aloft with one hand. He couldn’t decide if the gleam of streetlights off the scalpel was beautiful or terrifying. 

“No, hey, look at me,” Mr. Stark said with a shake of his head. “Leave Cho to do her thing and look at me.”

He dragged his gaze to Mr. Stark’s hair, the closest thing for him to look at while still obeying Mr. Stark’s orders. 

A sharp pain in his throat had him closing his eyes tightly, his jaw clenching again. His arms were still too heavy to even think about moving. His neck tried to flinch away, but Mr. Stark leaned more heavily on his head, holding it in place. “Nope, just hold still. She’s almost done. You’re doing great. Just give it a minute.”

Another cut and he thrashed his head again. He’d thought his throat was burning before, but now it was on fire.

“Happy, hand me that tube,” Cho ordered. 

Peter felt something poking around the open wound on his throat, rubbing against the raw edges, then sliding down his throat. 

“God, should there be that much blood? Did you cut too deep?” Mr. Stark asked, his face visibly more pale than it had been a few minutes earlier. 

“Do you want to try?” Cho snapped. “Then stop criticizing my methods and start mopping up blood. Use some of those gauze bandages behind me.”

“I’m good to let go?” Please don’t. Peter was worried his head might fall onto the floor without Mr. Stark holding it in place. 

“I’m not cutting, and he seems to have calmed down.”

Cho put some bandages around his throat, pushing down on them hard enough for Peter to gag again. 

“Sorry, Peter,” she said, but she didn’t let up. “I’m trying to help with the bleeding and create a seal. You should be getting a little more air now. Can you feel it?”

Why were they still expecting him to answer? But it did seem like something was happening. The black spots had receded a little. Instead of feeling like he couldn’t breathe at all, it was starting to feel again like he was breathing through a straw. Which he supposed he literally was this time. But he didn’t have the energy to say any of that. If he could even talk any more. Even nodding felt impossible.

“So did it work?”

“I don’t know,” Cho said through gritted teeth. “We’ll have to see if his oxygen levels start coming back up.”

“You couldn’t just look and see?”

“In case you couldn’t tell, there was a lot of blood in the way.” Cho was sounding a little frantic, which was almost as unsettling as this whole situation. “And this is not a procedure I’m very familiar with, especially with these ridiculous tools. So no, I’m not going to poke around and see if I did it right and risk causing more airway trauma. We’re going to wait for thirty seconds and see. And after all this is over, we’re going to have a talk about interrupting emergency care with stupid questions!” She was nearly yelling by the time she’d finished. 

Mr. Stark, wisely, didn’t say anything in response. 

Peter could see his face more clearly now, which he took to be a good sign. Seeing was good. 

“Stark, press down on this gauze here, while I get IVs ready.” He grimaced as the pressure on his throat switched, this one much lighter. “No, harder.” More firm now, but still lighter than Cho’s grip had been. 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” She spoke to the ceiling of the limo.

“Yes, Dr. Cho?”

“Call ahead to the med bay and tell them I’m inserting two large-bore IVs on the way. 16-gauge. We’ll do a central line once we’re in the OR if we need to. Tell them to prep two bags of epi solution at 4mcg/mL. And have them pull Peter’s meds from the storage room if they haven’t done that already.”

“Will do, Dr. Cho,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. responded. “Estimated three minutes until arrival at the Tower.”

Peter felt a prick at his right elbow, then his left, barely listening as Mr. Stark rambled to him. “You breathing better, bud? It looks like it. You’ve come up a few points. Still looking pretty awful though. But you’ll pull through. Just hang in there a bit longer and we’ll get you on the good stuff. Hey now, just relax your jaw. You’ll bite your cheek again.”

By the time they reached the Tower, the black spots in front of his eyes had completely disappeared, although his jaw was locking almost continually now. It was making it harder for him to focus on breathing. 

Peter watched as the ceiling of the limo disappeared from his sight, replaced by the inky black sky for a few seconds, then the fluorescent lighting of the hallways inside the Tower. 

Peter realized Cho was holding the gauze at his throat again and Mr. Stark was nowhere to be seen among the white-coated medics that surrounded him now. He tried to crane his head to look the way they’d come, but someone stabilized his head again, pulling at his hair as they did. They weren’t as careful as Mr. Stark had been. 

The white coat on his left spoke. “We prepped for a stomach pump before intubation in OR 2, but it looks like we don’t need that anymore.”

“Yep, airway had already collapsed, and he’s clenching his jaw. I had to do an emergency cric on the way over. Incomplete. Someone get me a real cric kit now so I can finish this.”

They arrived in a room with even brighter lights than in the hallway. 

“I want those epi solutions you prepped hooked up now. And give him 8 mg of his tier two painkillers. As soon as they’re dripping, I’ll fix the cric site.” She wandered around Peter, attaching monitor after monitor and observing the screens. 

“Blood pressure has slightly improved from initial,” she announced to the room, “but we need to get oxygen up. Prep a ventilator with 100% oxygen to attach as soon as the cric is done.”

A cold wave ran through Peter’s arm as the IV started, and within moments he felt the sharp edge of his pain dull. The noisy activity of the room around him dimmed little. He tried to look around again for Mr. Stark, but there was something strapped around his head, holding it to the bed so he could only stare at the fluorescent lights that were making his eyes water. When had they put that on?

He winced as the pain in his throat flared to life again, although not as bad as before. Cho was huddled over him, pulling implements out of a box next to her and fiddling with the tube in his throat, throwing bloody gauze pads in a metal dish someone else was holding. She slid the tube out, then almost immediately slipped a larger one through. It still stung, but it felt glorious to be breathing through a bigger straw when he tried to draw in air. 

Cho stepped back, holding bloody, gloved hands in the air. “There. Michaels, clean up the site while Jessen hooks up the ventilator.”

Peter was relishing in the ability to breathe even a tiny bit more when something whirred to life next to him at the same moment he lost the ability to breathe again. 

Or rather, something else took over breathing for him. 

The pattern was slower than he wanted it to be, so much slower. But no matter how much he tried to suck in air, it only worked when the machine wanted it to. It felt wrong. More wrong than not getting any air had felt. 

“Epi and fluid therapy are helping the blood pressure,” a medic reported.

“Just relax,” Cho said beside him. “It’s helping you breathe and get your oxygen back up. Just let it do the work for you.”

Peter heard and understood. At least, he thought he did. But his chest had been so desperate for air for so long, he couldn’t stop it from straining for more, back arching off the bed a little when the ventilator denied him. 

He gagged when the tube twisted in his throat at his movements. A hand grabbed his wrist when he went to reach for the tube. If they’d just get that stupid machine off, he body could breathe.

“He’s gagging. That’s an aspiration risk.”

“Get 12 mg of his general anesthesia into the nebulizer. We’ll have to put him under. He’s injuring the cric site.”

“Anesthesia is also an aspiration risk.”

“He threw up on the way over, so I’m calling that good enough. We don’t have time to wait.”

His chest ached for more air, for more control over his own breathing. A click and a hiss burst out of the ventilator’s normal rhythm, and Cho appeared at his head, an arm on his shoulder. “Relax for two beats for me,” she said soothingly. “Just two, and this will all stop. You’re almost there.”

He managed to partially relax his breathing, although his jaw was still clenched tightly. That partial breath loosened him up for the next one, and the next one, and then Cho’s kind face swirled away like water down a drain and he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Medical content/trigger warning for the following:
> 
> anaphylaxsis and anaphylactic shock  
intubation  
emergency cricothyrotomy (incision in throat)  
surgery without anesthesia


	4. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A loud slam brought Peter’s mind back to the surface. He’d been somewhere…somewhere deeper? Definitely somewhere quieter. The whispers from the corner of the room were deafening in comparison. 
> 
> “You don’t have permission to be in here, Tony.”
> 
> “But he’s out of the OR! This is a recovery room!”

A loud slam brought Peter’s mind back to the surface. He’d been somewhere…somewhere deeper? Definitely somewhere quieter. The whispers from the corner of the room were deafening in comparison. 

“You don’t have permission to be in here, Tony.”

“But he’s out of the OR! This is a recovery room!”

“Yes, which is also a private room.” A heavy sigh. “I’ll explain this to you, but only once, because I’m exhausted and you’re worried. He needs to be monitored closely until he comes out of sedation, especially since his biology is so unpredictable.”

“You’re saying he’s still in danger?”

“I’m saying I don’t know, but I will know more if I’m observing him in here than if I’m coddling you out there.”

“Coddling?! You weren’t coddli—” Peter shifted his head away from them at the sudden increase in volume. If he could figure out where his hands were, he’d try to cover his ears. 

“Look,” the same voice whispered. “He’s waking up! Now can I stay?”

“He’ll probably be in a semi-conscious state for at least twenty minutes, so no.”

Someone huffed. 

A gentler voice responded. “I’ll get you if anything changes. You try and get a hold of May again.”

Peter thought he might have fallen asleep again because when he opened his eyes again things were suddenly a little clearer. He knew where his hands were. He shifted one of them to move whatever it was that was laying heavily on his throat, but a hand caught his. 

“Don’t touch that, Peter,” Cho’s quiet voice instructed. “It’s the only thing letting you breathe right now.”

Oh, it was probably important then. Even if it was uncomfortable. And confusing. 

“What happened?” Peter asked. Or wanted to ask. When he tried to talk, not a single breath of air passed his lips. Where did it go? Was that a new spider power? Making air disappear? Not worth it if it meant he couldn’t talk. 

He took a deep breath to try again, but it was interrupted by something else breathing for him. The feeling of discomfort rushed back all at once. Not that again. He could breathe by himself, right? He didn’t need a machine. He needed to get it off. 

Cho grabbed his hand again. “Let’s not do this again, okay, Peter? Relax.” She rubbed the back of his hand, and Peter tried to focus on that as his lungs protested having their job outsourced. “The ventilator is feeding you pure oxygen to up your stats, which are nearly recovered. At this point we’d switch to an oxygen mask, but since the airflow stops here,” she tapped his throat gently, “it wouldn’t do any good.” 

Why would the airflow stop there? Peter foggily remembered her using that scalpel on his throat, but what had she really done?

“You look confused,” she said. “Do you want to see your throat and what’s going on there?”

He nodded, gratefully. 

She went to the cabinets and returned with a hand mirror that she helped Peter hold in his shaky hands. When the reflection stopped at his throat, Peter would have stopped breathing if not for the machine doing it for him. What had they done to him? 

A white strap wrapped around his neck, holding a plastic contraption attached to a tube in the middle of his neck. A tube that presumably went straight through his throat and into his lungs. 

Gross. 

This had better be reversible. He couldn’t be Spider-man if he had to lug around a stupid machine to breathe and couldn’t talk. No way was a stupid glass of mint lemonade going to be what retired Spider-man. 

“It looks worse than it is,” Cho said. “But it will prevent you from talking until we can take it out. So don’t even try to speak. We’ll get you a whiteboard or tablet or something in a minute, okay?”

Peter tapped his wrist. 

Cho seemed to get the memo. “It’s early Sunday morning, nearly 8:00. So you’ve been out for a little under 8 hours.”

Not too long then. May should be just coming off her shift.

A chair screeching across the hallway floor and heavy footsteps drew Peter’s gaze to the door, and Cho sighed. She seemed exhausted. 

“Mr. Stark’s been wearing a hole in the floor just outside the room. I’m surprise he hasn’t blasted it down yet. Are you okay if I let him in, just to see that you’re feeling a little better? Just for five minutes?”

Peter nodded with as much energy as he could muster, wincing in pain when his chin bumped the tube. 

“Okay, I’ll let him in to see you, then we’ll talk about treatment and future precautions. Remember, no talking! Thumbs up and thumbs down only.”

Cho left the room and Peter heard her briefing Mr. Stark on Peter’s inability to talk and the likelihood of him falling asleep again. 

But the longer Peter sat, the more awake he felt. Awake enough to worry that Mr. Stark would be grossed out by his throat tube.

Although he seemed to recall Mr. Stark yelling about blood last night, so this was probably not the grossest state he’d seen Peter in in the last eight hours. 

Mr. Stark’s entered the room hurriedly. He’d thrown a hoodie over his dress shirt from the party, but Peter could still see a trail of blood running down his trousers and flaking off his shoes. Peter’s blood. He shuddered. What a night. 

“You cold, spiderling?” Mr. Stark asked, misinterpreting his shudder. Although Peter could use another blanket now that he thought about it. Mr. Stark grabbed one that was folded up at the end of the bed and flipped it out, draping it over Peter. 

“There we go. Can’t have you turning blue again,” Mr. Stark joked, but he looked a little haunted behind the bravado. Peter smiled. He assumed laughing was also against the rules. 

“Yeah, Cho said you can’t talk right now. Which, under any other circumstances, might be a relief for a few minutes.” He pulled a chair up next to Peter’s bed and sat down, leaning back casually. “You know, Parker, there are way easier ways to get out of a party. Pretending to faint, for example. Or just disappearing. Or feigning a family emergency, which never worked for me in my party years, but you could get away with it.” 

He paused and took a deep breath, more serious. “Cho said spiders hate peppermint, so it kind of makes sense that you’d become deathly allergic.” Another pause, then he leaned forward, his hand a few inches from Peter’s, his gaze downward, his voice hollower. “All the same, I’m so sorry I gave you that drink, kiddo. I think the midnight toast tradition might officially be retired.” 

Peter was already shaking his head, but Mr. Stark continued. “Pepper’s sorry, too. She’s sworn she’ll never serve that drink again, and that anything of ours with any sort of mint in it will be clearly labeled if you’ll be within a mile of it. We’re both so sorry.”

Peter tapped Mr. Stark’s hand, then mimicked a writing motion with his hand. 

“Something to write with?” Mr. Stark stood. “Sure, let me grab something.”

He left the room and returned a few minutes later with a Starkpad, opening the notes app and handing it to Peter. 

Peter typed the most important thing he had to say in all caps: _NOT YOUR FAULT!_

“Maybe not, but also I was pretty useless helping Helen out,” he winced, “as she so loudly reminded me.”

Under his first message, Peter wrote, _not a doctor_, Then pointed emphatically at the first message again. 

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Mr. Stark said. “You forgive me. I’ll just go on feeling guilty in silence.”

Peter furrowed his eyebrows, and Mr. Stark laughed. “Okay, fine, it wasn’t my fault. It’s all on that stupid lemonade and your weird spider biology.”

Peter nodded firmly just as Cho walked back in the room. 

“Glad to see you’ve got a tablet now, Peter,” she said cheerily. Then somewhat less cheerily to Mr. Stark. “See? What did I tell you. Right as rain.”

“Not if you count the tube coming out of his throat,” Mr. Stark said, but there was no bite behind it. 

“Peter, I’ve got some questions for you to figure out what happened. Are you feeling up to answering them?” 

Peter nodded. 

“Mr. Stark, if you’ll step out again for this.”

Mr. Stark’s affronted noise would have made Peter laugh, if he could have, but he shook his head instead. Mr. Stark could stay. 

“Alright,” she laughed. “I’ve been overridden by my patient. You can stay. Now, Peter, have you ever had an allergic reaction before?”

_Not one that bad. Before spider bite was allergic to shellfish._

“But you’ve had shellfish since the spider bite and been fine?”

Peter nodded and held up three fingers to signify three times. He hadn’t been missing anything. Shellfish was disgusting anyway.

“What is everything you remember eating at the party last night?”

_Sparking apple juice. Little hot dogs. Mint lemonade._ Peter pointed at the last one since that’s when he’d started feeling off. 

“Okay, have you had lemons or peppermint recently with no reaction? Specifically since the spider bite?

Peter nodded, then wrote. _Mint + hot chocolate = delicious. Also Ned’s mom’s lemon bars._

“So it wasn’t an allergy then?” Mr. Stark interrupted. “What was it then?” A horrified look broke onto his face. “Could it have been poison? Was Peter poisoned? Who would do tha—” 

The horrified look intensified. “I gave him my drink,” he whispered.

“Come again?” Cho asked, as a pit grew in Peter’s stomach. 

“He spilled his lemonade, so I gave him mine. What if someone was trying to poison me?”

If that was the case, Peter was sort of glad he’d spilled his drink. A poison that had nearly killed him would definitely have killed Mr. Stark. Had being clumsy actually helped him out for once? Had he accidentally saved Mr. Stark’s life?

“It’s possible, but let’s not jump to conclusions.” Cho said, holding up a hand. 

“But he just said he’s not allergic!”

“Allergies can develop at any time,” Cho explained calmly. “Even after previous exposure with no adverse reactions. They are unpredictable. That combined with the symptoms presented and the fact that peppermint is an effective way to humanely deter spiders, I’m inclined to believe this is just an allergy, if a quite severe one.”

Mr. Stark furrowed his eyebrows deep in thought, like he didn’t quite believe her. Peter was torn. He didn’t really want to believe someone was trying to kill Mr. Stark, but he didn’t want to believe he’d never be able to have mint again either.

_So no more mint hot chocolate?_ He wrote, holding it up for both to see.

Cho shook her head. “Not for the time being. I want you to avoid all types of mints, as well as eucalyptus and lavender, which spiders also dislike. We’ll do some different types of allergy testing in a few days when you’re more recovered.”

“I think you should check his bloodwork for anything weird, just in case,” Mr. Stark volunteered, clearly not ready to let go of the poison angle just yet. 

“I will,” Cho assured, “for your peace of mind, but even if there were anything to find, I expect he’s metabolized it by now.”

Mr. Stark snapped his fingers. “I should have thought to keep the glasses and checked them for poison too, but it all happened too fast. I’m sure they’ve been cleaned by now, but I’ll check the cameras to see if anyone could have poisoned that drink.”

“Very well,” Cho said, “but if you keep chasing this without proof, you’ll become a conspiracy theorist, and I don’t allow those in my med bay. I doubt Pepper likes them much either.” The threat of tattling hung heavily in the air. 

_I’m betting allergies, not poison,_ Peter typed, remembering something. _Spider sense started going off when Mr. Stark handed me my drink, not his drink._

“Why didn’t you say something?” Mr. Stark asked.

_Because nothing looked wrong? And sometimes they’re stupid. It could have just as easily been that fly. They went off when those EMTs got there too._

Cho snorted. “No surprise there. If they’d been in charge, spider biology or no, you’d probably be dead. I’ve never seen such nerves and incompetence in my life. Must be new on the job.” She looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “In fact, I ought to call their hospital and report them for the state of their materials. When you’re looking through footage, can you get me their names and unit from their badges?”

“My pleasure,” Mr. Stark replied. 

So now that everyone else had a job, Peter needed to know what his next move was. _So when can I leave? And get this thing out of my neck? And breathe by myself?_

“In six hours, if everything goes smoothly. Allergic reactions can be biphasic, so we need to make sure symptoms don’t recur.” Peter couldn’t keep the disappointed look off his face. Six hours with a stupid breathing machine. He was going to lose his mind. 

She tapped the tube in his throat gently with her pen. “The thing in your neck can come out in four hours if your stats come up. Sooner if your ridiculous spider biology starts healing around it.” Peter shuddered at the idea of his skin trying to grow around the lump of plastic. Not a good look. 

“We’ll wrap it and you’ll be cleared to talk again, although putting pressure on the incision site while talking—and especially while coughing—for a few days afterward will help it heal better. She put a hand over her throat to demonstrate, looking like she was strangling herself. “And don’t speak in anything above a normal voice for at least a week. No yelling or screaming.”

“Hear that?” Mr. Stark joked. “Your normal hooliganesque behavior is off limits. You’ll have to whisper taunt criminals as Spider-man.”

Peter rolled his eyes. He was stopping the hooligans, not acting like one. 

“You can resume Spider-man activities Tuesday night,” Cho added, “but please, take a few days off. And you’ll need to start carrying epi-pens with you everywhere, even as Spider-man, just in case you’re exposed. I’ll get you some at a dosage that will work better for you but might kill anyone else, so don’t ever let anyone else use them.”

“I can make fingerprint locks so they won’t work if anyone else tries,” Mr. Stark added, tapping his fingers and already looking like he’d rather be in his lab. “And I’ll get right on adding it to the suit. Might even be able to get Karen to inject you automatically if she senses something’s off.” That sounded awesome. Way more awesome than wasting away in the med bay. Peter would give just about anything to be heading off to the lab with Mr. Stark in five minutes instead of being stuck here. 

“That sounds useful,” Cho said, “but run everything by me before dosing him willy-nilly in an alleyway.” She turned to Peter. “And in the future, if you ever have to use an epi-pen, you still need to head straight to the Tower. They’re just a temporary aid until you can get something permanent, okay? Most effects fade in around fifteen minutes, so you’ll need to re-dose every fifteen minutes until you can get to me.”

Peter nodded. He’d done the allergy thing before, although he’d never been vigilant about carrying his epi-pen. It was pretty easy to avoid shellfish, and his reactions had never been that bad. But this was different. He’d gladly carry an epi-pen around in his pocket until he turned 80 if it meant he didn’t end up in the hospital with an extra hole in his throat and a machine breathing for him. 

Cho checked her watch. “You’re due for another morphine top-off,” she said. It won’t knock you out, but it’ll help you relax with that ventilator running.” She moved to fiddle with a dial as Mr. Stark stood up, slapping a hand on Peter’s propped knee. “We’ll take care of you, kid. She’s got the meds here and I’m going to start putting some in your suit right now.”

Peter could already feel the morphine sliding through his veins again. He looked at Mr. Stark’s hand still on his knee and typed the only thing that came to mind. 

_Why are you wearing Happy’s watch?_

Mr. Stark rolled his eyes. “Because Rolexes are not everything they seem.”


	5. Dragged Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How was he supposed to get help without a phone?  
He could ask a stranger on the street to borrow their phone, but since a stranger on the street had just shot him, that didn’t seem like a great idea.

Monday morning found Peter walking quickly to school doing up the last buttons of his collared shirt. He hadn’t had time for breakfast, hadn’t had time to do his hair, had barely had time for a shower, but was probably going to make it to school in time. Probably. 

As his hands reached the top button, they moved almost subconsciously along his throat to where the tube had been. The perfectly straight scar there was smaller than it had been yesterday. It would probably be gone by tomorrow. But he couldn’t have anyone seeing it today. 

He did up the top button. It wasn’t his usual style and was a tad uncomfortable, but it was definitely more comfortable than anyone asking why it suddenly looked like Hawkeye had shot him in the throat as a child. 

He swept a hand through his hair a few times. Good enough. 

His fancy fingerprint-locked epi-pens were tucked at the bottom of his backpack, a new bump against his back that was both a terrifying reminder and a comforting protection.

Mr. Stark said his new suit with the preloaded epinephrine would be ready tomorrow, which was also when Cho had cleared him to start going out as Spider-Man again. She’d scheduled him for a bunch of allergy tests at the Tower the day after.

It sounded like Mr. Stark had abandoned his poison theory. He’d probably looked through the tapes and hadn’t found anything suspicious. 

Peter flushed with embarrassment when he realized Mr. Stark had probably seen him hanging up the handkerchief to dry under a table. What a weird thing to do right before collapsing from anaphylactic shock. What a weird thing to do at all. 

The glare off a passerby’s phone drew Peter’s attention to the time, and he jolted into a faster walk. He was going to be late unless he seriously picked up the pace.

His own phone had gone missing at the party and no one had been able to find it. Or at least no one had turned it in. It must have died by the time Peter thought to ask Mr. Stark to find it since he couldn’t find a tracking signal. 

Mr. Stark waved off the loss, saying he’d been working on some phone upgrades anyway and would give him a new phone along with his suit. But without his phone keeping time and alarms for him all morning, he was definitely running late. 

He was supposed to meet MJ before classes to give her his part of a group project that was due that day. She’d have to assemble pieces of it during noisy classes and lunch period before they could turn it in this afternoon. 

Peter had said he’d give it to her yesterday, but he’d been a little…busy. Getting a tube taken out of his throat, but he didn’t tell MJ that. Couldn’t, in fact, since he’d lost his phone. Eventually, he emailed her some attempt at an excuse and arranged to meet this morning.

He sped along the sidewalk, side-stepping around a slow-moving couple hauling a dozen shopping bags. Seriously, who went shopping at 7:30 in the morning? What was even open? 

As he stepped, his spider senses nearly sent him stumbling to the ground in a clumsy dodge. 

He recovered, looking around in confusion for anything that might have sparked them. Had there been a puddle? Had a pigeon nearly pooped on him? Was his subconscious worried about risking MJ’s wrath if he made her late for first period? 

He speed-walked another three blocks before they spiked again, his instinctive dodge nearly throwing him twenty feet up the building next to him. 

He managed to remain on the ground. As in fell over and banged his knee on a fire hydrant as he landed on all fours. Okay, ow. 

He stood up again, limping to join the crowd at the next crosswalk and shaking out his knee while he waited for the light to cycle. 

The masses of adults surrounding him—more specifically the lack of kids—did not bode well for him being on MJ’s good side today. School must be starting soon, if it hadn’t already. 

The light changed, and Peter was swept forward in a crush of New Yorkers with places to be. He had a place to be too, but right now his spider sense was yelling at him that all he had to be was anywhere but here. 

But the only escape he could see was jumping straight up and latching onto a street sign, and that was definitely not something Peter Parker could do. He turned his head back and forth, looking for a break in the crowd, yelping when a stinging pain struck the back of his neck. 

A quick swipe of the area returned a tiny dart with an empty glass vial on the back and the return of a very familiar sensation. 

Itchy mouth. 

Dizziness. 

Tightening throat. 

Had someone really just dosed him with mint on his way to school? Who would do that? More importantly, who would know to do that?

Mr. Stark’s conspiracy about poisoning was suddenly starting to seem way more likely. And if anyone was trying repeatedly to poison him, or even to poison him once, it was possible that they knew he was Spider-man. 

This was a problem that definitely warranted a call to Mr. Stark. He’d already deposited the dart into a front pocket and reached into each back pocket twice before remembering someone had stolen his phone. He groaned, then coughed. Great. How was he supposed to get help without a phone?

He could ask a stranger on the street to borrow their phone, but since a stranger on the street had just shot him, that didn’t seem like a great idea. And if he collapsed here, a stranger on the street would undoubtedly take him to a hospital, where he would probably die and definitely get outed as Spider-Man. 

MJ! If he got to school, he could use MJ’s phone. Or an office phone if she’d already gone inside. God, he hoped she’d gone ahead inside. She didn’t need to get caught up in this. Whatever this was. 

Speaking of, Peter slipped off one shoulder of his backpack, swinging it around to his front so he could dig out the epi-pens without stopping. A particularly bad wave of dizziness nearly made him fall, but an irate New Yorker pushed him back upright when he bumped into him. Gotta love New York. 

He pulled out an epi-pen, then paused. Should he still use it if it was poison and not an allergy? Weren’t epi-pens just for allergies? Wait, hadn’t Cho said something about it being a multi-purpose drug? 

A cough ripped through his lungs as the feeling of breathlessness encroached further. It didn’t matter, Peter decided. It was all he had and it had helped a little last time. 

Not stopping, he popped off the cap and jammed the pen into his leg, wincing as he felt the needle. 

Fifteen minutes. Cho had said he’d need to get to a hospital or take another dose in fifteen minutes. Man, he could really use something to tell time right now, like, say, his phone. 

His breath loosened up a little, but it was still uncomfortably tight as he stumbled forward, sliding the other epi-pen into his pocket and dumping the empty one into his backpack. The outline of his school in the distance gave him the motivation to speed up. He hoped no one was following him, but he knew that was pretty unlikely.

He made the last turn and the back doors of the school appeared before him. MJ was standing just outside the doors, the only kid in sight, talking expressively to Mr. Munts, a long-term substitute who was filling in while Mrs. Smith was out on maternity leave. He was probably telling her to get to class. Man, he hoped she wasn’t getting into trouble for his stupidity. 

He hoped he wouldn’t get her into further trouble by using her phone to help escape whoever had attacked him, but he was glad to see her. He could still mostly breathe, but he was starting to shake, especially his hands, and he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to make it all the way to the front office. 

“See, I told you he’d be here.” MJ’s annoyed voice drifted forward like a fresh wind, cutting through his buzzing spider sense. 

Mr. Munts rolled his eyes as Peter stepped forward and nearly collapsed on MJ. He hated the way hers eyes widened in fear and confusion. He’d wanted to keep her away from all that. 

“I’m sick. You have to call Mr. Stark for me. I don’t have a phone but Ned can do it.” His voice still sounded a little rough, the closing airway not helping. “Please, go get Ned and tell him to call Mr. Stark right now. Pull him out of class.”

“Geez, you sound like you’re dying. Let’s get you to the nurse, then I’ll find Ned.” She grabbed Peter’s arm and pushed through the first set of the double doors.

She grabbed the handle, but something was stopping it from opening. A foot wedged against the bottom.

“No one’s going inside,” Peter spun to the side to find that Mr. Munts had followed them through the first set of doors and was now casually leaning on the second set, trapping them in. 

The small handgun he had pointed at them felt even more claustrophobic. 

Peter pushed MJ against the wall behind him, shielding her from the gun. The doors penning them in on either side made Peter’s heart race. She was supposed to stay away from this. He was supposed to keep her away from it.

“What are you talking about?” MJ asked, putting her hands on Peter’s shoulders behind him, voice barely quavering.

“Pete here knows.” 

Peter didn’t say anything. Honestly, he was still pretty confused about everything that was going on, but he knew the important things. Bad guy with a gun trained on him and Michelle. He had to get them out. 

That was going to be hard with the way his knees were quivering weakly. His hands were held up in a protective stance, but they trembled so violently it was almost comical. On second thought, maybe the racing heart had something to do with the poison or the epi-pens. He didn’t usually shake like this. 

“We’re at a stand-off,” Mr. Munts said with a smirk. “I have the antidote Peter here needs, and I’ll gladly give it to him after he comes quietly. But I’m also more than happy to wait you both out. Shouldn’t be too much longer until he collapses.”

“Antidote? Come quietly?” MJ muttered behind him. “What is this, a D-list sci-fi?”

Peter ran through options as his wheezes filled the enclosed space. Waiting until he collapsed was a bad idea. Probably wouldn’t be long with the way his breathing was going. 

Maybe he could snatch the antidote from the shirt pocket Mr. Munts had gestured to. But he had to get Michelle out of here. 

The door to their right started to open, forcing a decision. 

“Run!” He yelled to MJ, and charged Mr. Munts, who had always seemed like a nice guy. That was before he threatened MJ though.

A high kick to Mr. Munts’s chest wouldn’t give away his powers, but it did slam his opponent back against the wall. Peter grabbed the hand holding the gun and pointed it to the ceiling as he tore at the shirt pocket until he’d pulled the antidote out of it. 

Unsure if he should swallow it or inject it or what, Peter slid the vial into his pocket. Feeling yet again like he was breathing through a straw, Peter pulled out the epi-pen, injecting himself to buy some more time until he could call Mr. Stark. Honestly, as this point, he may as well get a permanent tube stuck in his throat to help him breathe. Then this sort of thing wouldn’t be a problem.

The click of a gun from behind him and a whimper from MJ made him whirl around. A second man, presumably the one who’d started opening the door, held a gun to her head, the other hand clutching the base of her neck. 

Peter nearly stopped breathing purely from shock. He’d been expecting another kid running late to interrupt the scene, not an accomplice. 

“Try anything again,” he threatened smoothly as MJ winced, “and she gets a bullet in her skull. And trust me, that don’t paint a pretty picture.” 

Mr. Munts grinned, easily shaking off Peter’s grip on his wrist. 

As the medicine took effect, Peter’s lungs opened up more so he could breathe, but his body shook harder, dropping him to his knees with one hand on the floor. 

Useless. He was so incredibly useless if he couldn’t even protect his friends. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” the accomplice crooned. “You’re going to come with us without making a fuss, and gorgeous here gets to live to smile another day. I’ll even let you keep that antidote in your pocket for now if it makes you feel better.”

Yeah, because that would totally make him feel better now. Nothing short of magically teleporting MJ to her homeroom would make him feel better. 

But he croaked, “Fine, just let her go” because he couldn’t see any other option.

The accomplice kept a gun to her head and tossed a pair of handcuffs procured from his pocket to Mr. Munts. 

Peter let him pull his hands behind his back and cuff them together. On a good day, he could probably break out of them, even though they looked fancier than standard issue cop cuffs. 

But right now, he doubted he could even break the cop ones. Honestly, he doubted he could stand. 

He was proved right when Mr. Munts pulled him up and he pitched forward on shaking legs. Had Cho told him that shaking like a leaf was a side effect? Was this how it was supposed to work? He’d have been better off letting the reaction happen and fighting the bad guys off while holding his breath like that mugger with the garrote. He’d take making sure MJ was safe over breathing any day. 

“I’m so sorry, MJ.” Peter said once he was standing steadily. Well, baby-deer-on-ice steadily, but it was something. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this. It’ll be okay. Just tell him I’ll be—” 

The butt of a gun to the back of his head knocked him forward, Mr. Munts’s vice-like grip on his arm the only thing keeping him up. 

“None of that,” he said as MJ screamed. 

“Stop it!”

“Alright,” Mr. Munts spoke to the accomplice. “I’ll take him to the drop-off point. You take her somewhere she won’t mess us up.”

Take her somewhere? Not part of the plan. Peter struggled uselessly against Mr. Munts as he dragged Peter toward the door. “You said you’d let her go!” The scar on his throat twinged as he yelled against doctor’s orders.

“I said I wouldn’t kill her, and I won’t,” the accomplice said. “But I’m not leaving her here to run to the office and turn us in immediately. We’ll keep her somewhere for the day and let her go when they’ve already found out you’re gone. You fight us. She dies.”

Oh god, this was a worse Monday than Peter could possibly have imagined when he woke up this morning. And there’s no way he wasn’t going to be on MJ’s bad side for at least a month. 

“I’m sorry, MJ,” Peter called back as loud as he dared. “I’m so sorry.” Sorry there was nothing he could say to make it better. Nothing he could do. No one he could call. 

He could only watch over his shoulder as the door closed on MJ’s frightened face. 

He stumbled out to the parking lot in front of Mr. Munts, wondering if MJ would really be okay, wondering when Mr. Stark would realize they were missing, wondering if the vial in his pocket really held an antidote or if he was going to die in ten minutes when the last dose stopped working, wondering who these people were and what they wanted with him.

As they shoved him into the back of a classic, white kidnapper’s van, he realized he wasn't ready for an answer to that last one.


	6. Gunpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Tony Stark was the reason she’d ended up in the back of an average-looking sedan with her hands duct-taped behind her back and a jacket covering her face as a seedy criminal who’d pulled a gun on her drove her to god knows where probably to dump her body, then he damn well better be the reason she escaped in a glorious and timely manner. Honestly.

Peter suddenly had a much better excuse for being an adorably unreliable flake. If psychos from the government were after MJ, she doubted she’d be able to keep her due dates straight either. 

But the question still remained of why they were after him. And for that, she only had one lead. 

Tony Stark. 

Something about Peter’s internship with the man had put him in this ridiculous situation. And, by extension, her. 

And if Tony Stark was the reason she’d ended up in the back of an average-looking sedan with her hands duct-taped behind her back and a jacket covering her face as a seedy criminal who’d pulled a gun on her drove her to god knows where probably to dump her body, then he damn well better be the reason she escaped in a glorious and timely manner. Honestly. 

She hadn’t said a word during the long drive. Not since Seedy had dumped her in the back seat, immediately found a roll of duct tape on the floor, and her snarky, “What, do you get kicked out of the bad guy club if you don’t always keep a grimy roll of duct tape in your car?” had gotten her a threatening, “Do you want some of this covering that pretty smile of yours? No? Didn’t think so. So shut up.”

So she had.

Before they’d driven off, he’d grabbed her ID card out of her backpack, saying they were hacking the school computers to make Peter show up as present and they could easily do the same for her. He called his partner to give him the information while MJ stewed. No one would come looking for them until late afternoon, if that. Her family probably wouldn’t notice she was missing until pretty late. Depending on Aunt May’s work schedule, the same went for Peter.

When the car finally stopped, Seedy sat in the front seat for a long time, fiddling with something that MJ, obviously, couldn’t see. She smelled something burning. 

After what felt like forever sitting in silence, Seedy speaking up made her jump. “We’re here,” he said.

Duh. They’d been stopped for, like an hour.

“No screaming,” he continued, “or I’ll shoot you. I’m leaving you somewhere pretty safe, but you won’t be found for a few hours. Let’s go.” He came around and dragged her out of the back and immediately MJ felt a cold pressure near the center of her back. 

Great. The gun was back. It ground against her spine as Seedy urged her forward. She walked forward hesitantly and wondered where she was that no one thought to question someone tied up with a jacket on their head being led somewhere at gunpoint. Was there even anyone else around? The ground she could see was regular New York concrete, albeit grimier than usual. Where were the people though?

He stopped her to open a door in front of her, then shoved her inside.

Immediately, the jacket came off her head, and MJ shook her hair back out of her face, getting a better look at the large empty warehouse she found herself in. A few empty storage containers lay on the main floor. Metal stairs led up to a second floor that looked completely empty. Just your average, probably about to be condemned warehouse.

I mean, it wasn’t ideal, but at least it wasn’t some top-secret Area 51 situation with gun-toting guards. Seedy directed her to a corner of the room, where he had her sit down and duct-taped her ankles together. Seriously, that stuff had hair and dirt and gum wrappers stuck to the edges. Was it criminal for actual criminals to have decent duct tape?

She scrunched up her nose when he added a strip on her mouth. Guess he was serious about the no screaming thing.

He dug through her backpack and pulled out her phone, pocketing it—jerk—then dumped her backpack and Peter’s backpack against the wall next to her. She could see the tip of Peter’s part of the group project sticking out the top, and he stomach tightened at the reminder of where she should be right now. 

MJ’s eyebrows raised as Seedy pulled Peter’s phone out of his pocket and set it on the floor in front of her. “Tracking on that should turn back on at 5 pm,” he said. “Then Stark will come looking for it. Stay safe until then.” He winked, then walked away.

Really? That was it? No monologuing or explanations or precautions? Just her dumped in some warehouse in duct tape until Stark supposedly found her? When Peter’s phone magically turned on?

She was already so over this wanted-by-the-evil-government-guys life. 

Minutes slowly dripped by as MJ calmed her breathing that had gotten surprisingly fast once Seedy left. She was kind of relieved to be alone now, actually. She let herself freak out for a few minutes before pulling herself back together.

Goal number one? Get this gross duct tape off. A screw a few feet from her on the dusty floor seemed the best bet. After a few failed attempts to stand, she settled for falling over sideways and rolling like a worm over to it. It took a bit of writhing around to get her hands close enough, but in a few minutes she was sawing back and forth against the tape at her wrists with pitifully small motions. 

Her fingers were raw and her right arm half numb by the time the edges of the screw had worked through enough tape for her to tear the rest loose. She pushed herself into a sitting position, immediately ripping the duct tape from her mouth and taking a few deep breaths. Ah, blessed air!

She massaged her arm until the blood was flowing again, then ripped the duct tape off her legs.

The door they’d come through stood ominously in the corner, but MJ forced herself to peek outside it. 

The sun was still midway up, but this was the seediest neighborhood she’d ever seen. Seedy even though she only saw one person outside. That just meant there was no one around to help you when you screamed. Broken bottles and litter around a few large barrels suggested a larger population at night, but that image wasn’t exactly comforting.

She couldn’t see any landmark to tell where she was, and Seedy had taken her one source of GPS. But she had Peter’s phone, right? 

She eased the door closed, walked over to Peter’s shiny Stark phone, and picked it up. 

The phone screen was covered with words written in permanent marker. “Don’t come looking. He’ll be back when he’s ready.” What was that supposed to mean? She had a lot of questions for Stark when he finally decided to make an appearance. 

Some spots of solder on the front made MJ realize that this phone was probably what Seedy had been working on in the front of the car while they waited. Rigging it to turn on at the right time maybe? Or making it a bomb?

Taking a chance (based partly on the fact that Monday had already screwed her over so much that it owed her), she turned it on, quietly chanting “Please don’t blow up, please don’t blow up.”

It turned on with a chipper dinging that echoed around the warehouse. But thankfully, there wasn’t a wisp of smoke. 

The lock screen was a stylized Avengers sign. Nerd.

Holding the phone she realized she had no idea what Peter’s password was. Did she even need it? Maybe Stark would get the memo like Seedy said he would. But she really wanted to call Ned anyway. She tried a few swipe patterns she thought she might have seen, but of course none of them worked. 

After the fifth attempt, a female voice erupted from the phone. 

“Attempt to access by unauthorized user. Please give phone to Peter Parker for authorization.”

MJ shrieked and dropped the phone. Then sighed and picked it up again. Only Stark would give his interns talking phones. 

She swiped at the lock screen again. “Please give phone to Peter Parker for authorization.”

“He’s sort of not here right now,” MJ muttered in frustration. “That’s why I need to unlock you.”

“Please give phone to Peter Parker for authorization.”

Three more swipes and two curses only gave her a new screen that said “Too many access attempts. Phone is locked for the next five minutes.”

She dropped to the ground next to their backpacks, leaning her head back against the wall to wait out the five minutes. 

Whatever sort of classified Stark thing was going on here and involving Peter—and now her—was so not worth it. Any of it. She was going to have words with Tony Stark once he finally did show up. 

Although she was giving him, like, one more hour and then just taking off on her own. Peter’s pleas of “Call Mr. Stark” be damned. She’d walk to his stupid Tower and throw the phone in his face if she had to. 

As she was smiling at that glorious mental image, the window above her shattered inward with a loud crash. She screamed and threw her arms over her head as glass rained down on her. What the hell, Monday?

She stood up, shaking glass from her hair to see Iron Man floating in the air in front of her. Comically enough, he had one of his hand repulsors aimed straight at her. Some rescue.

“I’ll ask you this once.” His metallic voice sounded angry as it rang through the warehouse. “Who are you and why do you have Peter’s phone?”

“I’m not the person who took it, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Really? Couldn’t he tell she was the victim here?

“Well someone here was trying to get past the lock a few minutes ago.” He looked around pointedly. “And you’re the only one here.”

“Great. So you’re here to kill me because you think I took your intern’s phone? Nice security perk for the job I guess.”

Iron Man paused, and MJ wondered what was going on behind the mask. Was he used to people being terrified? “Okay, you know what?” he finally said, sounding even more frustrated. “No. I’m not doing this with a child. You can develop your Artful Dodger career later and on somebody else. Just give me the phone and we can both walk away.”

Why on earth had Peter thought Tony Stark would come flying to the rescue? Tony Stark, who’d endangered them in the first place by putting Peter’s nose where it clearly didn’t belong. Tony Stark, who came in guns blazing, everyone around him an enemy. Tony Stark, who still had his weapon trained on a teenage girl who clearly wasn’t a threat.

“Do you want his backpack too?” She asked bitingly, close to tears. 

For once Iron Man was speechless. But not for long. “Um, sure. I guess so. Wait, how did you steal his whole backpack? And why are you way out here in the middle of nowhere with it?”

“I didn’t steal it. I was kidnapped and dumped here.” She held her foot out, which still had duct tape hanging off the pant leg.

“Still doesn’t explain why you have his backpack or his phone.”

“I don’t know!” MJ was yelling now. Yelling at Iron Man. Ned would be so disappointed. “Some government creepos grabbed us heading to school and they took him God knows where and dumped me here with all our stuff.” Tears were starting to leak out of her eyes. She took a deep breath, but gave herself a pass. It had been a long day.

Apparently it was about to be a long day for Iron Man as well. The repulsor dropped and the faceplate of the armor flipped up. Iron Man’s real voice was a lot less intimidating, maybe even worried. “Government people? Peter was kidnapped?”

“Yes.” Peter and her, but sure let’s forget that. “He said to call you and that you would save us. So thanks.” She added sarcastically. 

Speechless again. MJ was on a roll today. “Apparently all you care about is getting back your precious tech with intern secrets on it, so here.” She tossed him the phone, and his robotic hands tried to grab it, failing miserably. The phone flopped the ground, the suit landing behind it. She wished she’d had her phone to film that. Would’ve made a great vine.

Iron Man’s suit folded back with a series of metal clanking sounds and Tony Stark stepped out. He wore a formal business suit like she’d seen him wear a dozen times during press conferences on TV, hair perfectly sheveled, but his face was missing its usual confidence. Was that…concern on his face? Or just confusion? 

He knelt down to pick up the phone, his eyes widening at the message scribbled on the front. “Back when he’s ready? What—” 

“Don’t ask me because I didn’t write it,” MJ said. “And I didn’t get many villainous monologuing clues from the bad guys either, so I won’t be much help.”

“If you’re an eyewitness, you can help. What’s your name?”

“Michelle.” Not MJ. They weren’t there yet. 

He cocked his head, sizing her up. “How well do you know Peter?”

What, did he think she was lying about knowing him? She answered with snark because she still hated how much suspicion he looked at her with. Like she’d somehow orchestrated this whole thing or was secretly turning Peter against him. Although after today, that last one would definitely be true. “Better than you do.”

He actually had the audacity to smirk at that. A smirk! Like he knew anything about a high school intern who ran around his company doing whatever he did. But the smirk quickly fell prey to a more serious face. “I doubt that, but we can debate it later.” Oh, they would definitely be debating that later. Someone needed to take Tony Stark down a few pegs. “Michelle, do you mind coming to Stark Industries with me? I’ve obviously got more questions for you, but I need to get this phone back to my lab ASAP and find out who tampered with it.”

A free trip to Stark Industries? Ned was going to be so jealous. Maybe even of the getting kidnapped part because he was weird like that. 

She’d go, but only for Peter. And because she didn’t think she was done yelling at Stark yet for being an idiot.

“Sure, but I doubt that suit fits two.”

“It…does not,” Stark nodded awkwardly, stepping back into the armor. “I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

“Wait!” MJ said, hating the hint of hysteria in her voice. “You’re just going to leave me here?”

“I’m sending someone for you,” he said slowly, like everything she was asking was stupidly obvious.

Stark couldn’t be this dense. Genius with tech he may be, but he was useless with people. Which was probably what had gotten Peter and her into this predicament in the first place. 

“I don’t know where I am,” she said, actually explaining the obvious, “or what type of neighborhood this is or what the hell is even going on, and you’re the only person who can help with any of that, so you’re not leaving until this mysterious ‘someone’ shows up for me.” She might have stamped her foot a little at the last word, but she gave herself a pass again. Being abandoned by Iron Man like this would make anyone crazy.

The suit clunked back to earth and Stark stepped out, having the decency to look a little sheepish. “Some good points there. I’ll hang around.” So gracious. 

“Wait, don’t you need to get back to school?” And apparently trying to pawn her off to someone else pretty quickly. Not that she wasn’t used to that.

“Bad guys took care of that,” MJ said. “Apparently they hacked the system so it’ll say Peter and I are present all day.”

Mr. Stark raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. “Yeah, I’ll definitely be all over that security breach by tomorrow, so don’t count on that again.”

“Like I counted on getting kidnapped to get out of school the first time? Geez, what was school like when you were a kid that would make that worth it?”

“Awful,” Stark quipped back. “Corporal punishment. Idiot teacher. One-room school house. I’m ancient.” She hid a smirk by tightening her lips. She was not going to deign to laugh at his jokes.

He walked over and grabbed the backpacks from the wall, slinging Peter’s over one shoulder and offering MJ hers. A sort of peace offering. She’d take it, but only because there were a few library books in it that the needed back. 

They walked silently to the exit, the Iron Man suit floating behind them like a shiny ghost. MJ was still trying to stop herself from crying, but she hoped Stark couldn’t tell. 

“I don’t really trust you yet,” Stark said as they walked together towards a larger street nearby. Points for honesty. “If you had any part in planning this, you’ve got to know things won’t end well for you. But if you’re telling the truth and got dragged into this, well, I’m sorry you got sucked into my business.” 

She didn’t trust herself to speak without crying yet, so she just nodded.

“Come on. Happy’s just down the street,” Stark volunteered, flipping Peter’s phone over in his hand. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

You have no idea, MJ thought to herself as they walked. Tony Stark sure had a lot of explaining to do.


	7. Beaten (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He might not know what their exact game was yet, but Tony Stark hadn’t yet met a game he couldn’t win. And he certainly wasn’t going to start losing when Peter’s life was on the line.

Tony hadn’t really expected to threaten a high-school girl in full-on Iron Man regalia today, but it had been a rough weekend. He’d barely slept, what with accidentally almost killing Peter at the party, then being useless trying to save him, then making up for it by spending 16 hours in the lab prepping a drug distribution system in Peter’s suit and scouring the footage from the party for a villain other than the mint leaf. 

Was it better if someone was actively trying to kill Tony or if an entire species of plant was passively trying to kill Peter? 

Easy. Someone trying to kill him, he could deal with. Had dealt with before. But he couldn’t very well use his Iron Man armor to burn every mint field from here to Kansas to protect Peter.

I mean, he could, but Pepper would be furious about the PR, and it’s not like stores in Queens couldn’t get their mint from California or something. 

Something still felt off about the whole event—and Tony was still hoping it would be him in danger going forward and not the kid—but he couldn’t find any time someone could have slipped poison into his drink. No one could have even known Tony was going to grab that drink specifically either. Give him one more sleepless night, and he’d probably come around fully to Helen’s allergy diagnosis. She’d be able to confirm it later this week with Peter’s tests, and then this would all be just one more unpleasant screw-up in a lifetime full of them. 

Then Peter’s missing phone had suddenly appeared—taunting him after his many failed efforts to track it down—in the hands of a girl he’d never seen before who claimed both she and Peter had been kidnapped. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Michelle. 

It was just that he believed technology way more. 

He needed to figure out who’d tampered with Peter’s phone and what they’d done. He needed to check out that attendance record hack Michelle had mentioned to corroborate her story and see if Peter was still at school. He needed to check the school’s CCTV footage and see if it had recorded anything happening. He could even track CCTV footage of Peter all the way from his house to the school to see if anything weird happened along the way. All that was much more reliable than the angry girl silently sitting next to him in the backseat of the car. Or maybe she was sad? Tony was about as good at guessing kids’ feelings as he was at, well, at guessing grown-ups’ feelings. Good enough to put his entire foot in his mouth at once, designer shoes and all. Why couldn’t people just be like machines and throw error codes or start sparking when they were upset?

Happy had been busy and sent them a driverless car, and Tony was wishing he’d gotten in the driver’s seat himself for the drive back, which at least would have given him something to do other than awkwardly avoid eye contact. Her lack of talking was unnerving. Like catching Pepper’s disappointed stare when he walked out of a board meeting.

He’d assumed all teenagers were as rambling and talkative as Peter, but this girl seemed to have the opposite problem. Or maybe this was a normal emotional reaction to being kidnapped and then threatened by Iron Man? 

He did feel bad about the repulsor thing. He should probably apologize. Make sure she was okay, assuming she wasn’t lying about the whole thing. You know, all the stuff he was known for being awesome at. 

He took a breath and wiped the emotion from his face. No worry. No fear. No suspicion. Just classic PR and sunglasses Tony. In fact, he’d much rather have a swarm of reporters at a press conference yelling questions and accusations at him than have to deal with the sullen silence sitting next to him. 

“Sorry,” he blurted out, and Michelle turned to him. “For the whole…thing.” He waved vaguely at the suit that had folded itself into a briefcase and was sitting between them on the floor of the car.

No response, just a sullen stare. Geez, she and Peter were like night and day. And just when Tony was starting to feel like he’d gotten a handle on handling teenagers. 

“How…are you okay?” He tried again.

Michelle snorted. “Sure. I’m okay.”

Fair. That was probably a dumb question. Okay, enough with the touchy-feely stuff. She wasn’t crying, so he was moving on. They were still ten minutes from the Tower and his labs and actual concrete facts, but he might as well try to get some info from miss “I don’t know why I have this stolen merchandise” while he could. 

“Look, can you tell me what happened with Peter? And why they…kidnapped you.” He hoped she didn’t pick up on any doubt in his voice. Even though he was totally doubting her.

She didn’t seem to. “I was waiting for him before school. He had to give me something. But this new teacher was hanging around bugging me to get to class already.” She was fidgeting, but her voice was clear. Maybe too clear for someone who by all accounts should be pretty traumatized right now. “Peter showed up late, like always, and said he was sick. Basically begged me to call you to help him. Well, to get Ned to call you.”

That…didn’t sound like Peter. He never called Tony unless Karen basically forced him to, which did wonders for Tony’s confidence as a mentor. That was ideal right? A mentee that was either too intimidated, too naive, or too dense to know when to ask for help? Michelle was either lying about Peter’s sudden openness, or the kid was in more trouble than he’d ever been in before. 

Wait, had she said Ned?

“You know Ned?”

She raised an eyebrow and slowly said, “Yes? Do you?”

“Distantly.” Which was certainly one way to describe internet stalking someone who’d hacked his tech with a four-year-old computer in a hotel room. He was still miffed at that. He’d known one day his smarts would be passed up by the upcoming generation, but a high-schooler? Really? 

If she said she knew Peter and apparently knew Ned, she’d either done her research or…

He groaned. “Does your last name happen to start with a J?” Please say no. For the love of all the tech in the world, please say there is not a single J in your entire family tree. 

“Yep. Your weird questions are right on the money.”

Great. Tony was making a great first impression. Classic Tony, really.

“You’re MJ!” 

She nodded, and Tony rolled his eyes to the ceiling. He couldn’t get just one break? Of course. Of course he’d threatened to kill the girl Peter couldn’t shut up about the first time he met her. Then accused her of stealing Peter’s phone and lying about everything and basically helping to arrange his kidnapping. Peter was going to be thrilled when he finally got rescued. 

At least he hadn’t left her in that warehouse waiting for Happy. Peter wouldn’t have stood for Tony’s classic lack of chivalry.

“But only my friends call me MJ, so stick with Michelle.”

Wow, okay, he wasn’t expecting shade from a high schooler, but considering everything that had happened, it did have an air of fairness about it. 

“Okay, Michelle, now I’m actually sorry for everything that happened.”

“You were lying before?”

Maybe, but Michelle didn’t need to know that. “I was being polite before. Now that I know who you are, I’m trying to be sincere. Sorry for accusing you of being a thief.”

“And a kidnapping conspirator?” Wow, she was not letting him off the hook for anything. This must be what people felt like standing before a firing squad. Tony felt like anything he’d said or done in the last fifteen minute could and would and was actively being used against him. 

“That too,” Tony said, quickly moving on. “So now that I really believe you about Peter getting kidnapped, tell me what happened.” And please look away while Tony took a few deep breaths to calm his stuttering heart. He’d felt much calmer a minute ago when he’d thought Michelle was a liar. Now he knew she was telling the truth, and that truth was eating at his chest like shrapnel. 

“His phone didn’t convince you?” Michelle interrupted.

Deep breath. Focus on what you know. What are the facts? What are your tools? “This phone has been missing for days,” Tony said, “during which time Peter has been fine, so no, it didn’t convince me. Now where at the school did they grab you?” He needed to get that footage.

“Near the back doors, by the bridge.”

“Good, I think there are cameras there.”

“And you know that off the top of your head how?”

Because he had trust issues deeper than the Mariana Trench, and it was easier to fund a new security system than plumb those depths in a healthy way. 

“Not important,” he hand waved, getting sucked deeper into his own racing thoughts trying to recreate the scene.

“And you were waiting for Peter with the teacher and then Peter showed up?”

“Leading the witness, but yes.”

“Then what happened?”

“He said he was sick and needed me to get Ned to call you. I was taking him to the nurse’s office when the teacher pulled a gun on us and threatened to kill us if Peter didn’t come with him.” There were so many horrible details in that brief description, Tony didn’t even know where to start. The gun? The teacher? Peter was sick? Sick enough to call Mr. Stark? He’d start with that last one. 

“The nurse’s office? How sick did he look?”

“Like a solid sneeze would knock him over. He nearly collapsed on me, shaking like a leaf. He was gasping like a fish out of water.”

The already deep pit in Tony’s stomach sank further. He’d seen Peter gasping like a fish recently, and it hadn’t ended well. Had the kidnappers known he was allergic to mint? Tony unzipped Peter’s backpack and started digging around in it, dumping notebooks and textbooks on the floor. “Did you see him use an epi-pen?”

“Yeah,” Michelle said, “which was weird because I didn’t know he had allergies. Since when does he carry epi-pens?”

“Since Saturday night.“ Oh, God. If Peter had a repeat of Saturday night’s episode without Helen there. If he hadn’t made it to a hospital. Hell, even if he had made it to a hospital. Not that the kidnappers would have let him. Did they have a doctor? Did they know how to treat him? Regular medicine wouldn’t even work on him and no one around him would know that.

Tony noticed Michelle staring at him and tried to slow his rapid breathing. The last thing he needed was to have a full-blown panic attack in front of someone he’d physically threatened before discovering them to be the pubescent crush of his only mentee. He was never going to be able to look this girl in the face again without cringing. Not that that was a new feeling, but there were usually a few more shots of tequila and broken chandeliers involved.

“It didn’t seem to help much though,” Michelle added. “He started shaking so hard afterward that he couldn’t even stand.” Her voice had shrunk to a scared whisper, while the voices in Tony’s mind had escalated to screaming. 

He’d been harboring the hope that Peter could escape on his own, if he hadn’t already. 

Now that hope had been replaced with the fear that he was already dead. 

Tony found what he was looking for in the backpack, pulling out an empty epi-pen. The tiny needle sticking out caused so much dread it may as well have been a sword. So Peter had brought them like he’d promised, and he’d been forced to use at least one the first day he’d carried them around. 

“Yeah, he used one of those,” Michelle said, “but he dropped it on the ground at the school when they took him.”

Okay, so he’d had to use both. So he’d most likely had to use the first one about fifteen minutes before he ran into Michelle, sometime on his way to school? Yeah, Tony was going to need CCTV of the entirety of Queens to get this sorted out. 

None of the options were good. If Peter had used his epi-pens, something was very wrong. And now he'd been kidnapped when he needed to be in a hospital. Tony’s brain supplied all sorts of images. A ghastly remake of the limo scene but in the back of a moving van. Hacks and quacks trying to shove a tube down Peter's throat or, even worse, cut another hole in it. 

Had the kidnappers done this to him, or was this the worst coincidence of all time? Had they been expecting to kidnap a healthy kid and ended up with one on death’s door? And if they’d triggered a reaction on purpose, had they counted on the size of the reaction or had they underestimated themselves and killed him by accident?

God, he didn't even want to think of him being dead. He couldn't. He had to be alive somewhere, waiting for Tony to come find him. Or doing whatever the hell that note had hinted at. What kind of sick game were they playing? 

Another realization came crashing down like a bomb. If they had managed stop Peter’s reaction, it would only be because they’d learned about his mutation and how to deal with it. If he was still alive, they knew he wasn’t all human. And it wasn’t too far of a leap from there to Spider-Man. If he was still alive, his secret identity had been cracked.

So he was in the hands of unknown psychos either dead or with his cover blown. What had probably been a low-key kidnapping or ransom case (how pathetic was his life that the phrase “low-key kidnapping” was even in it?) would have turned into something very different. 

Too many questions and not enough answers. 

Too many variables and not enough constants. 

“Mr. Stark,” Michelle’s quiet voice interrupted his thoughts. “Maybe try breathing a little slower. We’ll find him.”

He knew that, the logical part of his brain reassured him. He was Tony Stark. He had the equivalent resources of several third-world countries pooled together at his fingertips. He could do this in his sleep. 

He had to assume Peter was alive and had somehow gotten past his anaphylaxsis. On his own or with whoever was around him. There was no other option Tony cared to entertain.

He looked up, mildly surprised to see they were already pulling into the garage at the Tower. Perfect. Now he could get down to business. He grabbed Peter’s backpack and slid out. “Come on, Michelle. Let’s get to my lab and figure out what’s going on.”

The elevator opened up to reveal Helen Cho. Last week, Tony might have described her as harried, but he’d seen her actually harried on Saturday night, and this was nothing. “Tony! I need to talk to you about those EMTS I wanted to report.”

“Not now, Helen,” Tony said stepping in to join her. She made no move to get out, so she must have come down specifically looking for Tony. “I’ve got a much bigger problem to deal with. Get my lawyers involved if you want to pursue any legal action against them.” You know, since they didn’t have enough on their plates dealing with Tony.

“That’s just it,” Helen said as the doors slid shut. “I called the hospital to report them, and they said those EMTs were together on another call across the city when we saw them at the party.”

“Say what now?” Tony was definitely paying attention. It wasn’t them? That meant he’d be able to run facial recognition on whoever had assumed their identities for the night!

“They also said they never got a 911 call about our situation,” Helen said. “We assumed someone at the party called 911 on Peter’s behalf, but those EMTs knew to show up without a 911 call at all.” This day was just getting better and better. 

“I knew emergency services were never that quick!” At least he’d been kind of right about something! “They knew it would happen. Or that something would happen. That’s why they got there so fast.”

“Yes,” Helen said. “I’d like to formally apologize for calling you a conspiracy theorist earlier. Something is definitely going on. I think the reason those EMTs were so incompetent was because they weren’t really EMTs at all.”

“I formally accept your formal apology,” Tony said, “but we’ve still got a lot of holes to fill. Why show up after the target was poisoned? They’d already pretty much killed him. They would have if you hadn’t been there. Unless they weren’t trying to kill him?” He still didn’t understand the whole plan. The minds of criminals were like welding sparks to him. Interesting, but unpredictable. 

“Peter got poisoned?” Michelle’s young voice broke through their adult conversation. Oops. He’d forgotten she was here. He’d be great at babysitting. 

“Either that or he’s allergic to peppermint,” he said, “so keep your kissing mints and gum to yourself.”

She glared at him, but carried on seriously. “The teacher said he had an antidote. Peter fought him and got the antidote, but then he had to use his epi-pen and a second guy came in with a gun, so they got him anyway.”

An antidote? Well there went Helen’s allergy theory. He was so going to rub this in her face once Peter was back safe and sound. 

Never mind that he’d been almost ready to cave an hour ago. It was the principle of the matter. His instincts had been right.

“Wait, Peter had to use his epi-pen?” Helen was looking a little harried now. “Why isn’t he with you? I told him he needs to come in immediately if that happened.”

“Peter’s apparently been poisoned by bad guys and kidnapped, so save the scolding for not following doctor’s orders until we get him back.” He registered the look of shock on Helen’s face, but only had a few spare neurons to feel bad about putting it there. He had work to do. “You coming to the lab to help?”

The doors dinged open to Tony’s personal lab where F.R.I.D.A.Y. had been holding the elevator. Helen followed them into the lab, helping Tony clear off a table for them. 

Finally. It was time to collect everything they knew about Peter’s poisoning and kidnapping and figure out who’d written that message on his phone: “Don’t come looking. He’ll be back when he’s ready.”

That was a ransom note. That was somebody toying with Tony. And with Michelle. That was somebody who wanted to play a game with the great Tony Stark just to see if they could win. 

He might not know what their exact game was yet, but Tony Stark hadn’t yet met a game he couldn’t win. And he certainly wasn’t going to start losing when Peter’s life was on the line. Here in his lab, with all the tech money could buy at his fingertips, and some besides, Tony hadn’t lost yet. 

They wanted to play a game with his kid’s life? He’d give them a game. He’d beat them so soundly they’d regret ever playing.


	8. Beaten (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For possibly the first time ever, Tony’s tech had failed him.

Tony pressed his middle fingers to his temples and shook his head as the holoscreens in front of him blurred. No time for headaches, Stark. Pull it together. 

He looked up to stare into the projected faces of the EMTs F.R.I.D.A.Y. had pulled from the gala footage. Their faces matched the faces on their driver licenses, but those same faces had also been confirmed across town responding to a different emergency. Two men with two faces, both in two places at once. And F.R.I.D.A.Y. couldn’t find any obvious anomalies. Their true identities remained a frustrating mystery.

The only theory that Tony really had was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s face cloaking tech, but even Tony hadn’t been able to get his hands on that. For research purposes, of course, not to prank Rhodey when he visited. 

His eyes glazed over, focusing right through the holoscreen at the room behind it. Michelle was curled up on the couch, eating a sandwich Helen had pressed into her hand earlier. She’d recounted every detail of her story three times, but she still looked like she had something to say to Tony, a glare that kept the hairs on the back of his neck raised when he saw it. It was a little better with her across the lab instead of across the table, but Tony still couldn’t hold her gaze for long. It was like the reincarnation of his conscience, telling him that it remembered all his mistakes that had brought them here, even if no one else did. 

This girl would put Happy out of his forehead of security job if he wasn’t careful. He could just park her in the lobby and her glares would drive away anyone with ill intent or a guilty conscience. Which would mean Tony could never use the front entrance again, but the security footage of her stares parting swarms of pesky businessmen like the red sea would be worth it. 

On screens on either side of him, CCTV footage played from the kidnapping behind the school, part of Peter’s walk to school, and the gala. They probably weren’t helping the headache, but Tony was hoping for a breakthrough if he left them playing in the background. Supposed subconscious work or whatever. 

He’d watched them all a dozen times consciously, but now largely ignored them as he flipped Peter’s phone over in his hand. Time to make this tech sing like a bird. 

His check for fingerprints had only returned conclusive matches for Michelle and Tony, implying the kidnapper had wiped it down. But he still had the soldering work in the back to figure out what they’d done with it.

He reached for his tools, glancing at the school footage. It wasn’t a great angle on the action since most of it happened behind the doors, but Tony could clearly see Mr. Munts dragging Peter toward the parking lot, his body shaking like a leaf and barely able to stand. Then Michelle got dragged off by the second guy in th same direction.

Seeing that for the first time, he’d immediately hacked the school database to get info on the teacher involved, fixing the attendance hack the criminals had introduced along the way. Only to find that during the whole event, the apparently real Mr. Munts was teaching science in his classroom. He had the footage to prove it. 

So the kidnappers had pulled off whatever magic the EMTs had on Saturday night, which he was no closer to cracking. The Saturday night footage was as infuriating as ever. Even poring over it, he still couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten the poison into his drink. 

And it wasn’t exactly clear how the two poisoning events were related, even though the poison and the face cloaking tech clearly indicated that they were. But why try and poison Tony one day, then go after Peter the next? Or had they somehow known Peter was going to take Tony’s drink and were targeting him the whole time? 

No, the EMT had said they’d gotten a call about a man who had collapsed. Not a boy, a man. They were expecting to find a man. Tony. No one seeing Peter collapse would have called him a man. Tony should have noticed that reviewing the footage before Peter was kidnapped. Maybe then he would’ve have been more persistent about something feeling off. Maybe he could have actually done something to help before everything went to hell. Just once he wanted to predict something bad happening and head it off before it tried to ruin his life. And the lives of everyone around him. 

The footage of Peter on the streets played on his left. He’d been acting more and more erratic the closer he got to school, dodging, falling over, looking around wildly, then eventually pulling out his epi-pen and dosing himself. 

But Tony never saw anyone else, and Peter didn’t drink anything. He did reach for his neck at one point, so maybe someone had shot him with a dart or something? The footage was too grainy to tell. 

The footage was a wash, but now F.R.I.D.A.Y. was using the city’s CCTV to track where the three vehicles involved had gone, with a priority on the van that had taken Peter. 

And Tony still had the phone. Within ten minutes he’d disassembled it and figured out exactly what they’d done. It was just a tiny battery hooked to a processor and a timer. It was set to go off at 5:00 and jump start the phone battery, although it could have been assigned to do other things too. Curious what would happen, he set off the timer. The phone buzzed on the table and dinged back to life. Like clockwork, an orange flashing light went off on Tony’s workspace where he’d set a tracking alert when Peter said he’d lost his phone. 

His own phone buzzed in his pocket. 

Coincidence? 

He pulled it out to find a text from Peter’s phone, that he was still looking at on the table. 

It was a picture from the party from the vantage point of one of the adult party-goers. The fancy “Celebrating Tony Stark and Peter Parker” banner could be seen in the background, along with the heads of a half-dozen party-goers. 

The text beneath it read, “The fall guy you invented took a bullet for you this week, Stark. Enjoy your freedom. We can’t wait to see what he forges.”

Took a bullet? It was figurative. Definitely. Had to be. A common expression, really. They couldn’t have meant an actual bullet, could they? Tony’s racing heart didn’t quite agree. 

And the bit about forging? As in blacksmithing? He knew blacksmithing was a dying art, but there had to be easier ways to get an apprentice than kidnapping one.

Michelle’s voice over Tony’s shoulder made him startle so hard his phone skittered onto the table.

“The fall guy you invented? What does that mean?”

“What? I don’t know. I didn’t write it.”

She narrowed her eyes, obviously remembering her saying those same words back at the warehouse. “Yeah, but it was written for you.”

“I’ve read hundreds of of fan letters written for me that I can’t make heads nor tails of,” Tony said. 

“Somehow I don’t think this guy’s a fan.” 

“What gave it away? The kidnapping or the pseudo-ransom note?” Oops. He should probably tone down the sarcasm. She’d had a rough day. And had the ability to wreck him in Peter’s eyes. If she hadn’t started that before the whole kidnapping thing, she definitely would when this got resolved unless Tony stepped up in a big way. Not two-story stuffed rabbit way, but he’d think of something. 

“It was the duct tape,” she said without pausing. Like it was something she’d actually given thought to before. 

Tony stared. Alright then. Sarcasm well received. “You done with lunch? I can take you home when you are.” Happy would take her home. He needed another awkward, silent car ride with this girl’s glare like he needed someone to knock his lab into the ocean again. 

“Oh, I’m not leaving yet,” she said ominously, fists on her hips. A surprising fire danced behind her eyes that made Tony roll his chair a few inches back. That firing squad feeling was back, which he’d been hoping he’d only had to feel once in his life. You know, like most people who had experiences with firing squads. “I have a question before I leave.”

Oh, this was going to be a treat. He’d always wanted to be interrogated about his major life mistakes by a furious teenager who was personally invested. Damn Parker for liking this girl and making him feel like he owed to him to sit down and shut up for at least two minutes.

“How dare you assign Peter to whatever government classified ridiculousness you have him working on that landed him in this mess? He’s fifteen.” 

This was going to be a complicated conversation to have without revealing Peter’s spider secret. He assumed if Michelle already knew—like Ned did—that it already would have come up.

“I’m well aware, but you don't know what you’re talking about. It’s complicated.” Stellar response. Tell the person asking questions they’re an ignorant idiot. Pepper would be proud.

“Then tell me.”

“You think I endangered his life by telling him, and now you want me to tell you?”

“No. I don’t want to know what he was working on.” She was talking slowly now, like Tony was the ignorant idiot. “I want to know why the hell you thought he should handle it instead of you. Too busy? Too below your pay grade?”

Ouch again. Michelle sure had it out for him. 

“He’s a strong, smart kid. He can handle himself.”

“Which is why he’s probably half-dead in the clutches of some second-rate substitute teacher.” Geez, was she trying to give him a panic attack? Because that’s where this conversation was going faster than a heat-seeking missile. Time to abort. 

“Look, you can yell at me all you want once we’ve got Peter back,” Tony said, happy to get out of this guilt-inducing conversation any way he could. Today had given him enough emotional problems without Michelle tearing him a new one. “Let’s save the cat-fighting for when we have him back.”

A tense pause. “I will 100% take you up on that offer,” Michelle finally said firmly. “And make sure Peter’s there to watch.”

Great. This bulldozer of a teenage girl was going to single-handedly annihilate his relationship with Peter. Jericho missile style. Boom. 

Tony could have kissed Helen when she walked off the elevator and interrupted the unexpected staring contest Tony found himself locked in. 

He spun around in chair, back to Michelle, ignoring how it made him feel like he was turning his back on a buzzing rattlesnake. Helen’s furrowed eyebrows did not raise his spirits. 

“Peter’s ige allergy blood test came back negative for all the allergens I suspected.” She threw a folder on the table, and Tony picked it up, glancing through it, more for something to do than for actual comprehension. “False negatives are a possibility,” she continued, “but at this point I think it’s safe to say my original diagnosis was far afield.”

“That’s a point to me I think,” Tony said, ignoring Michelle’s scoff behind him. “Mysterious stranger in the ballroom with a cup full of poison it is.”

“It’s possible it wasn’t even in the drink,” Helen said with a sigh. “There might have been a puncture would that already healed up or something inhaled. We’re really working with nothing here. I should have checked more closely.”

Tony dropped the folder back to the table, leaning forward and speaking quietly so Michelle couldn’t hear. 

“I still think the drink is the most likely. He’d have dodged a dart on instinct, like he did in the footage, and we didn’t see anything like that. An aerosol would be pretty hard to get concentrated enough, and he probably would have dodged that too.”

He pulled up the text from Peter’s phone on his own. Even glancing at the picture made his heart twist painfully in his chest, but he showed it to Helen. 

“They said he took a bullet for me, and I think they mean the drink. I was their original target, but Peter got in the way. If there’d been someone with a dart gun hiding in the rafters, they would have just tried again. But with the drink they couldn’t because their plan was already set in motion.”

“But if they were after you, why go after Peter today?”

“Maybe they’re still trying to get to me? Maybe we’ll get a ransom call tomorrow?” But then why send that weird text? Why not use that to send the ransom note? 

There was so much speculation here it was making him physically ill. He shrugged and turned back to Peter’s phone, putting everything back where it belonged before snapping the back casing on. 

There. That was one thing he could fix. Now on to the next thing. 

#

For possibly the first time everTony’s tech had failed him. 

They’d scoured the party kitchens and questioned the staff and the party guests.

They’d tried to track Michelle’s phone the kidnapper had taken.

They’d pored over ever second of footage of Peter they had over the whole weekend. 

They’d tried to trace the cars back to their owners. 

They’d tried to track them when they, along with the ambulance, had wound their way out of the city. 

They’d checked Stark Industries to see if the villains were stupid enough to actually send an invoice like Helen had suggested. (They hadn’t.)

They’d tried to determine the facial cloaking tech used, but S.H.I.E.L.D. maintained nothing from their end was missing, and Tony didn’t know of anyone else who had the technology besides HYDRA. And if these people had HYDRA connections at all, that was bad.

They’d looked into a few other recent doppleganger crimes, where the criminals had seemed to be in two places at once, but nothing threw up any red flags. No poison. Nothing to do with Tony Stark in any way that he could see. 

They’d tried to track where the medical equipment they’d borrowed came from, but it was impossibly banal.

They’d tried to speculate why type of poison had been used and who manufactured it. 

They’d pinpointed the moment and angle the party photo from the text must have been taken at, and there was nobody there in the footage. Like a ghost had taken a picture three minutes before everything that night had gone to hell. 

They’d run background checks, they’d run facial recognition, they’d run fingerprints, they’d run out of things to run through and were now just sitting and scraping through the same meager pieces of evidence hoping for a miracle.

One of the guests they’d questioned had sent Tony a video an hour ago. They’d been recording a silly video on their phone when Peter had collapsed. It had still been filming during the entire episode, held upside-down in the owner’s hand while they’d completely forgotten they were filming. It had probably twenty seconds footage with the EMTs in it, and he was having F.R.I.D.A.Y. run it. 

Again. 

“Run it again, Fri. This time with 15% acceptable error rate.” He tapped his fingers against the desk in a rapid pattern, hunched over the desk with a migraine. “And focus on body type too, not just the face.”

Helen’s sigh barely registered. They’d become so common in the last hour they were starting to sound like ambiance. Ambiance that made his head hurt a little more every time.

“She’s not going to find anything.” She had appointed herself his colleague in this endeavor since Pepper had flown to Japan yesterday for business. Probably partially out of guilt at misdiagnosing Peter, although Tony didn’t blame her. He bit his tongue rather than respond. His nerves were frayed, and she didn’t deserve to get yelled at for something that wasn’t her fault.

He’d sent Michelle home when the school day had ended, telling to her pretend with everyone but Ned that it had been a normal day at school instead of a frantic day in Tony Stark’s lab looking for her kidnapped friend. She demanded to be told the moment he found something out and reminded him that he still owed her a yelling match. Great. Couldn’t wait to get over with. 

F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s ever patient voice rang through the lab quietly, but Tony still scrunched up eyes in pain. Stupid migraine. 

“Facial recognition on those two EMTs confirms them at Samuel Grist and Randall Locke.”

“But we know it's not them. We know they were somewhere else! So don't keep telling me it's them!” He found himself yelling and his hand stinging from where he’d slammed it on the table. He needed to get it together. 

F.R.I.D.A.Y. ignored his outburst. “Body scan reveals anomalies around the jawline of Mr. Grist, suggesting that the actual person underneath has a slight beard.”

“Great,” Tony said sarcastically. "We’re looking for a criminal with facial hair. That narrows it down.”

“To 36,781 criminal options based within the city limits. Body type and height further limits options to 21, 549.”

“That’s a wash then.” That didn’t even cover criminals who might have bussed in from Jersey. And people had certainly traveled from much further away to take a crack at Tony Stark and the people close to him.

“I hate to say this, but we need to stop, Tony.” Helen looked exhausted. Tony was sure he looked worse. “We haven’t found anything yet, and you’ve barely slept all weekend. We can come back to it with fresh eyes in the morning.”

“Come back to what?” Tony asked bitterly. “Everything’s a dead end. The EMTs, the poison, the ambulance, all the footage we can find, the school, the teacher, Michelle.” He grew louder with each frustration he voiced. “There’s nothing to come back to because everything we’ve got is a damn dead end!”

Helen came over and put a hand on his arm. “I know, Tony. But we’ll figure something out. Someone will hear something or they’ll slip up. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

He wanted to believe her as he let her steer him out of the lab, but his heart wasn’t in it.

There was something deeply unsettling about walking out of his workspace. Different from all the other times he’d left. 

It was something Tony hadn’t felt in a long time. Like he was walking away from something he’d lost hope in. Like there was no point in coming back tomorrow to beat the same useless irons into the ground.

Tony couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so beaten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: 
> 
> Rewriting this, I realized that there are a few missing characters in this story that I’m not going to bother adding. May hasn’t shown up yet. And I don’t think the rest of the Avengers have even been mentioned. And I’m not even sure what time period in the canon this takes place in. This is my first fic ever, and I was just trying to focus on Peter and Tony’s relationship. But with more practice and more time, I hope to start doing more complex character stories soon.
> 
> Also, another Peter POV chapter is coming tomorrow. =)


	9. Stab Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, where are we going?”
> 
> Mr. Munts barely glanced his way. Obviously not the conversational type. That was okay. Peter was pretty sure he could annoy any adult into talking to him.
> 
> “What? I don’t even get to know why you’re kidnapping me?”
> 
> Mr. Munts dropped an uninterested look. “I kidnapped you because someone paid me to.”
> 
> “Substitute teaching not paying enough bills?” Peter should be careful of the snark. He was trying to learn something here, not make the guy mad enough to beat him.

The kidnappers hadn’t been lying about having the antidote for Peter. Which meant that it was poison and not allergies that had almost killed him Saturday night. Which meant that he wasn’t allergic to mint at all and wouldn’t have to give up his mint hot chocolate. Sweet! Literally!

But it also meant that Peter was still shaking violently, hands cuffed behind his back, kneeling over a box in the back of the van trying desperately not to throw up again. What stupid side effects for an antidote. Mr. Munts, who was sitting guard over him with his gun on his lap, thought so too, if the look of disgust on his face was anything to go by. So sorry, Mr. Kidnapper, for making your day grosser than it had started out.

Although honestly, as a high school teacher, Peter was sure Mr. Munts had seen worse. Also the fact that he was apparently well-versed in firearms and kidnapping meant he’d probably done worse himself. What exactly had Mr. Munts’s job been before coming to Midtown? And why break cover now? Peter had never had so much as a flicker from his spider sense around the man. And yet here he was in front of him, gun in hand, taking him god knows where for god knows what.

Was this what they’d had planned for Mr. Stark on Saturday? Poison him at the party so he couldn’t fight back, then whisk him away?

It’s probably what would have happened to Peter if Cho hadn’t insisted they only use her medical facilities. She’d definitely saved his life. Which was on the line again right now. He felt a little bad that it had been jeopardized again so quickly. He hated seeing hard work put to waste. 

A ringing cell phone interrupted his thoughts. Mr. Munts answered with a rough, “You did it?”

Pause. 

“Good thinking. I’ll get Mike on that.”

Another pause. 

“You said Michelle Jones?” Peter stiffened. They’d done what? He strained his ears during the next pause, hoping he could hear the other end of the conversation. Something about her ID card?

“No, just the name’s enough.” Enough for what? What had he gotten her into? Why hadn’t he protected her better?

He wanted desperately to listen again, but the sound of his own vomiting covered up whatever the kidnappers were saying about MJ. 

“Thanks” Mr. Munts said, and hung up. 

Peter wiped his mouth on his shoulder and sat back against the side of the van facing Mr. Munts, his stomach a little more settled for the time being. The van hadn’t been in stop-and-go traffic for a while, which boded well for Peter’s stomach, but not for his rescue prospects. It meant they were getting further out of the city. 

With a reprieve from his stomach, it was time to figure out what he could about this whole mess.

“So, where are we going?”

Mr. Munts barely glanced his way. Obviously not the conversational type. That was okay. Peter was pretty sure he could annoy any adult into talking to him.

“What? I don’t even get to know why you’re kidnapping me?”

Mr. Munts dropped an uninterested look. “I kidnapped you because someone paid me to.”

“Substitute teaching not paying enough bills?” Peter should be careful of the snark. He was trying to learn something here, not make the guy mad enough to beat him. 

“You know I’m not actually that teacher, right?” Oookay. Peter wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“I just borrowed that guy’s face.” Yeah, that didn’t clarify anything. Mr. Munts reached underneath his jaw, close to his ear, then suddenly peeled back a pixelating layer of something high-tech off his face, revealing a much older, pocked face with a dark beard. “You’re all so gullible,” he smirked.

Relief and confusion warred for top billing in Peter’s head. At least his substitute teacher hadn’t tried to kidnap him. But what kind of tech was that? Did Mr. Stark know it existed? Poor real Mr. Munts was probably being interrogated by an angry Iron Man for no reason he could think of.

“Mr. Not-Munts, I think you made the real Mr. Munts’s day a whole lot harder this morning.”

“Not my problem.”

“So should I call you Mr. Not-Munts or do you have a real name?”

“Not one I’m telling you.”

“That’s fine. I’ll make one up. So people just pay you to kidnap people? That’s, like, a real grown-up job? Do you just drive around offering kids candy or something? Oh! The Candyman would be a good name for you. Is that your call sign?” He was rambling now. But he was also memorizing every detail about this guy’s face to track him down as Spider-Man and get him behind bars as soon as he got out. 

“Call me that, and you’ll be missing some teeth.”

“Yep, cavities from candy are a real threat.” Peter just couldn’t stop himself. 

The Candyman leaned forward and stomped a heavy boot onto Peter’s outstretched shin, making him hiss. He ground into it a little. “Wanna try again, smart alec?”

Nope, Parker. Dial it back. Don’t make him too mad. Just get information. He waited silently until the Candyman released his leg and went back to idly staring at the wall of the van. Peter pulled his legs up to his chest, wishing he could wrap his arms around them. 

Five minutes of silence was all Peter could bear. That was probably enough for the guy to cool off a little, right?

“So why would someone want to kidnap little ole’ me?” Peter asked. Maybe that would help him figure out who these guys were. And what they wanted with him. 

The Candyman snorted. “The real question is why someone would pay as much as they did to kidnap you. Easiest mark I’ve had in a while. Wasn’t even that hard to work around your whole I-can-sense-projectiles-coming shtick.”

Peter’s heart froze in his chest, and his stomach lurched unhappily. Did these guys know he was Spider-Man? 

With one look at Peter’ confused face, the Candyman’s face broke into a huge grin. “What, you didn’t think we’d find out? That poison should have killed you without the antidote the first time, so we knew something was up. And Stark was pretty torn up when you went down. Weren’t too many dots to connect after that. It took 36 hours to plan your nab. Like taking candy from a baby.”

Peter raised his eyebrows at the phrasing, and the Candyman frowned angrily, realizing what he’d said. “Not like the Stark nab you ruined. That took almost four months to plan.” Oh good, a kidnapper who held a grudge against Peter for ruining his perfect kidnapping record. This just kept getting better. 

“Well you’ll have another chance when Iron Man comes storming in to arrest you.”

The Candyman scoffed. “We’re way too professional for that. No one even knows you’re gone yet. You or your girl.”

Ned knew they were gone though. He was probably freaking out. Partly about their group project grade, but more about the fact that his two friends weren’t answering their phones. He might call May, but if he got worried enough, he might call Mr. Stark. 

And then they’d find him for sure. 

But he hoped they try to find MJ first. 

“Are you done throwing up yet?”

“Why? Is it inconvenient for you?”

“Yeah. Once you’re done I’m going to sedate you. Then I won’t have to hear your damn voice anymore.”

Okay, maybe he’d taken the annoying-the-bad-guy-into-talking business a little too far. Choosing between trying to throw up again and let this guy knock him out was depressing. As was the fact that they had anything they thought could sedate him with. It’d taken Cho upwards of a month to synthesize something for him.

If he weren’t shaking so badly, he’d consider breaking out right now. He’d felt able to walk on his own now, but fighting and running was a less sure bet. And they still had MJ. Unless Ned had already called someone and Mr. Stark had saved her.

He was still debating the likelihood of that when the Candyman pulled a kit from under the bench, loading up a needle from an unlabeled bottle. Cho would have words for them about proper labeling etiquette if she were here. She’d have words for a lot of other thing besides that too. 

Peter shrank back against the wall when the Candyman knelt next to him. He grabbed one of his arms, roughly pushing up the sleeve. He held up the needle threateningly in Peter’s face, his furrowed eyebrows showing just how done with this conversation he was. “It’s either this, or I poison and antidote you again. Take your pick.”

Wow, this guy was really good at giving him really terrible choices. 

But he didn’t think he could throw up again, and he definitely couldn’t be sure MJ was already safe, so sedative it was. He’d save his miraculous escape for another time. 

Peter looked away from the pinch in his shoulder. Once it was done, the Candyman pushed Peter over to lay down on his side, then went back to sitting on the bench. 

Whatever had been in that needle and was now swimming through his bloodstream didn’t put him all the way under—he wasn’t sure if they’d meant it to. It made him a little calmer, brought out the tiredness that had been building since getting the antidote. When his eyes slipped closed a few minutes later, it was from exhaustion rather than sedation, although Peter’s last conscious thought was that he’d rather let the kidnappers think he was totally out of commission. And if a nap helped that illusion, then so be it. 

#

The slamming of the front doors threw Peter back to consciousness. He tried to stretch before remembering his handcuff situation and that he’d be better of playing dead, even though he was feeling loads better. Still a tiny bit shaky, but none of the nausea or sedative effects. He could probably break the handcuffs once he wasn’t lying down anymore.

But they might still have MJ. Until he knew she was safe, he couldn’t risk her. 

Someone threw open the back doors of the van, revealing a dark night impaled by a pair of flashlights. They definitely weren’t in a city anymore. Some sort of field maybe? A forest? If was night, Mr. Stark definitely knew he was missing by now. But he didn’t know how far they’d traveled in the meantime. They could be three states away by now. 

The Candyman nudged Peter’s shoulder sharply, and he rolled up to his knees with difficulty, adding in some swaying to appear more out of it. It couldn’t hurt. Especially if it stopped them from giving him more drugs. 

A man stood in front of the doors, smiling in fiendish glee when he saw Peter. He wore sunglasses for some reason Peter couldn’t fathom and a photo-op worthy grin.

“Ah, Stark’s little inventor. Nice to finally meet you.” He offered a hand for Peter to shake. 

Haha, very funny. 

“Your patent was quite impressive.” Sunglasses withdrew his hand. “Stark chose his protege well, it appears.”

“And now he’s got to pay to get him back?” Peter slurred his words, trying to appear confused, but still trying to figure out what their intentions were. A car door shut, and a third man came around to join the group. Probably the van’s driver, Peter guessed. 

“I haven’t dealt in something as banal as ransom kidnappings in a decade, Mr. Parker. Plus, they never involve helicopters.”

He nodded his head toward Peter’s right, and the Candyman grabbed Peter’s arm, hauling him to his feet. He feigned dizziness as he was pushed from the truck, nearly falling over and being pulled upright with a curse. 

The flashlights ahead of him lit up a helicopter pad with a pair of sleek black helicopters perched on it. Peter was pushed to the one on the left, and the Candyman easily lifted Peter inside, scrambling in after him and pushing him to the back. Peter’s spider sense was screaming at him to get out, as was his common sense, but with MJ who knows where, he just couldn’t. He’d have to wait for Mr. Stark to find him. 

“Merchandise appears in working order, mostly,” Sunglasses observed lightly. As if he were talking about a TV set or a couch rather than a human person.

“Do I ever deliver anything else?” the Candyman grunted. He pushed Peter back on the floor against the back seat, producing a second pair of handcuffs and cuffing Peter to one of the bars welding the seat to the floor of the helicopter, wedging him between two seats against the side.

“Well, Stark found the girl earlier than planned, so I was a little concerned.” Wait, Mr. Stark had already found MJ? She was okay then. He actually sighed in relief. The Candyman raised a single eyebrow at him as he backed out of the helicopter, cargo secure. Peter could still hear the men talk once they moved out of sight. 

“How early?”

“Sometime before noon.”

“I’ll talk to Chris. But I was careful. If he was going to find us, he would have done it by now.” A sinking feeling in Peter’s stomach agreed with him. But at least MJ was safe. And Mr. Stark wouldn’t stop looking until he found him.

And more importantly, now that he knew MJ was safe, nothing was stopping him from escaping on his own power. 

He flexed his arms, shifting his body and pulling at the handcuffs to see what his leverage was. 

Sunglasses climbed into the pilot’s seat, flipping switches, putting on a pair of headphones, and starting up the rotor blades at a slow whirl. 

Peter shifted to a better position as the Candyman and the driver talked outside, muffled by the wind from the increasing spin of the blades. Before the second set of handcuffs had trapped him to the seat, he would have just pulled his hands straight out to the sides. But now it would take double the power to break both sets, and the tight fit crammed between the seats made that angle pretty difficult. 

The better option seemed to be leaning forward and using the seat behind him as leverage to try and break the pole he was strapped to. Or the handcuffs wrapped around the pole, he wasn’t picky. Then, even if he was still wearing two sets of handcuffs, he’d be free to run. And he could run pretty fast when he wanted to. 

The van driver stepped into the helicopter, taking a side seat and eying Peter, a large knife strapped menacingly to his thigh.

That complicated things slightly. 

Peter heard the footsteps of the Candyman walking away, and waited to make his move. The fewer people around, the better. 

The blades around them were whipping around in a frenzy now, creating a deafening roar.

When the helicopter jolted, leaving the ground, Peter knew he was out of time. Trying to look as innocent as possible, he leaned forward, putting more and more pressure on his wrists. The cuffs cut into his skin, but he could hear the faint screeching of metals as the cuffs and the pole debated who would be the first to break. 

“Hey, what are you doing?” the van driver asked suspiciously, reaching for his knife. 

Out of time. Always out of time. 

Peter planted his right foot on the seat behind him and thrust himself forward in a Hail-Mary burst of energy.

With a sharp snap, the welding holding the pole to the ground gave way, the handcuff chain slipping off the bottom. 

Peter stood up, jumping back over his double-cuffed hands so they were in front of him. Thank you, creepy spider flexibility. 

The van driver pulled his knife out, yelling to Sunglasses. “Take us up! Take us up now!”

The helicopter’s sharp veer up and to the right unbalanced Peter, and he grabbed at the seat next to him. Trying to keep with the momentum and stay away from the angry knife-wielding dude, Peter flung himself toward the door and swung it open. The wind immediately pulled it from the hinges, but Peter didn’t hear it hit the ground. How high up were they already?

He reached his hands—still stuck together—up high and stuck them to the outside of the helicopter beside the door. Before he could swing his lower half outside to join his hands, the van driver grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled at it. 

Peter gagged as the collar pulled tightly against his throat, but didn’t budge. He crawled his hands out further, pulling against the shirt and blindly kicking behind him at the van driver. He had to get on the side of the helicopter. Maybe even onto the windshield. Could he force the pilot to land if he distracted him enough? 

He stopped worrying about that when the van driver sunk his knife into Peter’s right shoulder. 

Peter yelled, his hands slipping down a few inches, but he kicked a foot behind him again that connected with something and threw himself onto the side of the helicopter, sidling as far away from the door he could get until he reached the windshield. 

He looked down, hoping to see the Candyman’s flashlight down below or even the lights from the van, but it was pure pitch black. Just a sliver of a moon above and a field of black below. How far had they come to be so removed from civilization? He had no idea how high they were. No idea what was below them. Fifty feet or a thousand. A soft pile of hay or a pit of spikes. And he didn’t have his webshooters to try and ease the descent.

Peter had missed his window of opportunity. He had nowhere to go. 

The van driver apparently knew this too. He leaned out the door casually, although he had to yell to be heard. Peter suspected without his enhanced senses, he wouldn’t have been able to hear anything at all. 

“You’re welcome to spend the rest of the trip out there, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Wind chill’s a bitch where we’re going. And there’s no seat belts. Plus you’re getting blood all over our ride, which is just rude.”

Rude, huh? How about stabbing someone in the shoulder for rude? He looked down to the wound where it was illuminated from the light within the helicopter. The knife was still sticking out, although it looked ready to fall out. Not very deep, but it didn’t have to be to hurt. 

With his hands stretched above him, clinging to the vehicle, Peter could feel blood streaming down both sides of his arm as it shook, trying to hold its grip and compensate for having some of its muscles severed. The front of his shirt was already sticky where it pressed against the glass of the windshield. He dropped his head to rest against the back of his hands. The cold was already seeping into his bones, into his shaking fingers and throbbing shoulder.

Adding insult to injury, the pilot activated the sprayers used to clean the windshield, soaking Peter’s shirt where he hung.

“Really?” Peter shouted. But he knew his voice was lost to the wind. He was freezing. And had no plan. The pilot probably barely needed the windshield what with modern GPS tech and all, so he’d probably be happy to fly the whole way there with Peter on his windshield like a splatted bug. 

With an air of defeat, grunting every time he had to use his stabbed shoulder, he made his way back to the door. The knife fell out halfway back from all the motion, plummeting into the darkness below. Peter didn’t even try and stop it.

Inside the helicopter again, the van driver glared at him. “I liked that knife.”

“Shouldn’t have loaned it out then,” Peter said angrily. 

That got him a harsh shove to the back seat, which was now listing sideways with one of its posts torn out. 

He sat back in his seat, shivering as he clutched a cuffed hand to his pained shoulder, biting back a scream. Despite the pressure, blood continued to leak between his fingers. The van driver was still glaring at him, apparently not going to offer any help. 

Peter ignored him, staring instead at his own morbid bloodstains being smeared back and forth by the windshield wipers as the pilot tried futilely to clear his view. And beyond those bloodstains was a destination Peter still knew far too little about.


	10. Trembling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anybody who knew how to program a micro-drone to deliver letters should damn well know how to use the regular mail system. This felt like some lame attempt to modernize Victorian courting with its minstrels soliloquizing under balconies. 
> 
> Tony rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he opened the balcony doors, picking up the blank envelope and opening it on instinct. Within the first sentence, the previous day’s horrific events had come flooding back to Tony’s mind, washing away any last semblance of sleep. 
> 
> He held the paper in front of his chest with trembling hands, all thoughts of drones and courting drained from his mind.

The perimeter breach alarm rang through the penthouse, snapping Tony back to awareness. 

“What the—Fri, what’s happening? Who’s here?” He threw the blankets back, swinging his leg out of bed and grabbing for the alarm clock. Almost midnight. So maybe two hours of sleep? If he was lucky? It would have to do.

“An unknown micro-drone has deposited an envelope on the balcony. Sensors indicate it left immediately thereafter. Object was too small to target with security system.”

Anybody who knew how to program a micro-drone to deliver letters should damn well know how to use the regular mail system. This felt like some lame attempt to modernize Victorian courting, with its minstrels soliloquizing under balconies. 

Tony rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he opened the balcony doors, picking up the blank envelope and opening it on instinct. Within the first sentence, the previous day’s horrific events had come flooding back to Tony’s mind, washing away any last semblance of sleep. 

He held the paper in front of his chest with trembling hands, all thoughts of drones and courting drained from his mind.

To Mr. Anthony Stark:

We were glad to make your acquaintance at the gala Saturday night. Our condolences for how the evening turned out. Rest assured, we intended something much different. 

We are writing because we’ve encountered a technical problem while dealing with your young colleague. He appears to be in pain, and none of our doctors can find analgesics or sedatives that have much affect on his unique biology. As his mentor, we thought it best to inform you and acceptable to request that you help provide care. 

If you’d like to help, we will be sending a crate via drone that will have space for one 15 mL bottle of your choice. Please label it clearly and include any necessary instructions on a single 3 x 5 note card tucked in with the vials. The drone will appear at the balcony of your penthouse Tuesday morning at 7:00 am, where it will wait for approximately ten minutes for loading. 

If any attempt is made to place tracking devices on any part of this transaction, or to personally pursue it, the drone will immediately self-destruct. This offer will not be made twice. 

Our plans will proceed no matter your response, but seeing as we hope to work together in the future, we wanted to give you the opportunity to contribute.

Sincerely,

There was no signature. 

Tony was an expert at business talk. Detached, formal, cold, purely about the transaction. He hated it, avoided it whenever he could, left most of that sort of talking to Pepper, but that’s what was staring back at him. 

A memo. A heartless memo discussing someone being held against their will and in completely preventable pain without so much as an ounce of emotion. 

Opposing waves of relief and shock crashed into each other as he digested the words, drowning his already anxious thoughts. 

In pain meant that Peter was alive, something Tony hadn’t been able to confirm since he’d disappeared while needing immediate medical attention. If Peter was still alive, then Tony was still in the game. They still had a chance.

But he still had no proof. Didn’t kidnappers usually send proof of life before making demands? What kind of kidnappers were these?

They didn’t seem like they were making a demand at all. It sounded like they were proposing a damn custody agreement. That or offering him some exciting opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something. They’d probably deny being kidnappers at all if Tony asked them, although that was not the first thing Tony was going to do when he found out who these bastards were and finally met them face to face. Based on the way they’d spun this letter, they imagined themselves some sort of twisted associates. 

But the good news that Peter was probably alive was tainted by the news he was in pain. They might have reason to lie about Peter still being alive, but what did they have to gain from only pretending he was in pain? What could they possibly do with painkillers other than relieve his pain?

The knowledge that Peter was somewhere hurting—apparently so badly that they couldn’t get it under control on their own—made Tony’s hands twitch, eager to do something, anything to help. Eager to find out exactly what was going on and exactly how he could help. Or who he could throw money at to get them to help, which was his usual MO. 

But now he felt ready to jump in his suit and search every building from here to California, maybe have F.R.I.D.A.Y. hack CCTV footage around the world listening for Peter’s screams. 

How had he gotten hurt? And how badly? Tony’s lungs shriveled up in his chest at the myriad of possibilities his brilliant mind came up with. Maybe the antidote hadn’t worked, so Peter had another bloody hole cut in his throat. Maybe there had been side effects. Maybe he’d tried to escape and they’d tried to teach him a lesson. Or make sure he couldn’t do it again. Maybe he’d been tortured for information. Maybe they were running medical experiments on him. Maybe the “he took a bullet for you, Stark” line from yesterday was meant to be taken literally, and Peter had been shot. 

The mental images got worse and worse, morphing with all the horrific things Tony had seen done over his lifetime and projecting them on Peter. Strapped to a table under the knife of an open-heart surgery. Threatened at gunpoint to help whatever insane plan his captors had. Water-boarded in a dark cave until he passed out. 

Tony felt pretty close to passing out now, he realized. He was gasping for breath. His hands were trembling so hard he’d dropped the letter without even noticing. He knew there were other clues in it that he should study, maybe something that would help him save Peter or discover the kidnappers’ identities, but his memory of the page only carried the message that Peter was in pain, somewhere far away and alone. 

He should have done something. Should have spoken up louder about his misgivings about the allergy diagnosis, maybe. He definitely shouldn’t have let Peter run back home and then off to school without so much as a big-box retail drone looking out for him. He should have known something like this would happen to Peter. It’s what happened to anyone even relatively close to him. Maybe putting Peter’s name on that patent had been signing his death warrant. 

A creaking door behind him interrupted his hyper-ventilating, and Tony spun around so fast he fell over, pressing himself back against the glass wall of the balcony in fear. They’d gotten so close with the letter. Too close. Right at his doorstep. It could have been a bomb. It could have been anything.

Helen’s worried face appeared. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. said you needed someone. What happened?”

Tony just handed her the note, still trying to drag air into his deflated lungs and stop his heart from racing. 

She read the note quickly, glancing up at Tony with a concerned expression every few seconds. Was her concern for Peter or for him? Peter needed it so much more. 

She dropped the letter to her side, offering Tony a hand. “We’ll deal with this in a minute, but you’ve got to calm down. Let’s go inside and you can lay down on the couch.” Yeah, then maybe he could wake up and find that this was all a terrible dream. The whole weekend. He’d blacked out for entire weekends before, right? Hopefully this was just that, but he’d had a crazy dream while he was out. He’d take relapsing over this nightmare of a weekend in a stuttering heartbeat. 

He took her hand, head swimming as he stood up quickly. Helen maneuvered him inside and plunked him down on the living room couch. Her instructions to take deep breaths made Tony laugh wheezily. Yeah, because that was so easy. He dropped his head into his hands for a minute. Peter needed him right now. Needed him not to be freaking out. Needed him to be following up on this new lead, whatever it might mean. 

When Tony finally looked up at Helen, she nodded. “Good. Now let’s talk. It appears we have first contact with the kidnappers.” How could she be so calm? 

“They don’t even sound like kidnappers,” Tony said bitterly. “They sound like they’re trying to do us a favor. Like they’re helping us through some beareaucratic loophole instead of helping them treat a kid that they themselves hurt.” 

“Yes, it’s quite bizarre,” Helen was pacing slowly now, rereading the letter, somehow managing to make every step look like a product of careful planning and not of the fiery anxiety still racing through Tony’s veins. “No mention of a ransom at all, which I’d thought the most likely course for them to take.” 

“And no proof of life either.” Kidnappers and ransom he new how to deal with, but this? This was new.

“Yes, that’s unfortunate. But for now we should act on the belief that he’s still alive.”

“And maybe dying. Or at least hurt badly.”

“Maybe, but we can’t know that.” Too many unknown variables. Tony would give his left kidney for a ten-second video call with the kid to find out what state he was in. Hopefully not in a state so bad he’d actually need the kidney, but Tony would give him that in a heartbeat too. As long as they sent over a drone with a refrigerated organ box. 

“The part I can’t interpret is the last line. ‘We hope to work together in the future?’ How could they possibly think you’ll want to work with them in any respect ever?”

“Because they have Peter.” Because they had to know he’d do just about anything to get him back. Including helping villains and revealing how much of a monster he was to the world. Whatever it took. 

“They know he’s Spider-Man,” Helen said with clinical acknowledgment. 

“I know.” It was one of the minor revelations Tony vaguely remembered from the letter that had been driven out by the knowledge that Peter was in pain. 

“If they didn’t know that before, their plans might have changed.” Helen laid the letter down on the coffee table, and Tony immediately picked it up. His hands needed to be doing something. 

“I can’t tell what their plans were either way,” Tony said. “Try to poison me, then go after him. No ransom note. Leaving Michelle in some warehouse. The note on the phone and the text. None of it adds up.”

“There’s no way for us to know. The only real question here is if we should send the painkillers.”

“No,” Tony said slowly, “the only question here is whether or not we try and track the painkillers we do send. Of course we’re sending them.” Did she think leaving Peter in pain was a better option, even hypothetically? She’d made his meds. She knew how hard they were to make. She knew how bad it was for him if he didn’t have them. 

“There are risks to sending the drugs,” Helen countered, her pacing gaining an air of frenzy. “They might be able to make more than we send or alter them somehow. They might use them to keep him sedated for long periods of time. They might use them for non-consensual surgery.”

“This whole thing is non-consensual!” Tony nearly yelled. “And you read the letter. They’re going to do whatever they're going to do with or without whatever we send.”

“And we’re just assuming they have adequate doctors who aren’t going to accidentally overdose him or mix it with something else? These are serious drugs, Tony.”

Yeah, that was kind of the point. Peter was in a state where he needed serious drugs, and Tony would be damned before he let this chance pass him by.

“Can you fit all the necessary instructions on a 3 x 5 card?” 

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I trust they’ll be followed.”

They didn’t have the luxury of trust here. It was too serious. 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y, what are the complications of chronic, uncontrolled pain?”

“Uncontrolled, persistent pain can have long-lasting effects on the immune cardiovascular, neurologic, and endocrine systems. It can contribute to many conditions, including adrenal exhaustion, memory loss, cognitive decline, and immune suppression.”

“I know all that,” Helen snapped. “But we don’t know he’s in pain.”

“But he probably is, and this is our one chance to help. Why don’t you want to help!”

“Because I don’t want something I created getting into the hands of psychopaths who will use it for god knows what on god knows who! I thought you of all people would understand that!”

Oh.

This was the Jericho missiles all over again. It was the weapons stash outside the cave in Afghanistan. It was the destruction of Gulmira. It was Obadiah stealing his reactor and Iron Man tech. It was every damn thing he’d even invented that people had used against him or against the world. Could he really ask Helen to do the same with her creation, knowing how much it ate at him?

Yes. If it would help Peter, he’d ask it without question.

“Helen, I’ll personally track down all the information they glean from these drug myself once we get Peter back, but I’m not passing up this opportunity. A Peter with controlled pain is objectively better than a Peter in severe pain. Which, since he’s been kidnapped by psychos, is the likeliest place for this to end, as much as I hate to admit it.”

“Fine.” Helen dropped to the couch next to Tony, seeming anything but fine. “We’ll send them his tier three sedatives. They’ll be the most widely useful. But I’m only using one side of the card. The other side needs to have a note from you on it in the name of opening up communications.”

The relief Tony felt at her agreement brought back a bit a humor. 

“When did you become an expert in hostage negotiations?”

“When I learned how to manage frantic parents worried about their kids in my waiting room.” 

Touche. She was probably using those same skills on him right now. 

“So do we track it then?” This was the real question that had been plaguing Tony. They had a time and date for a drone flight plan that went straight to Peter. Shouldn’t he take advantage of that?

He continued when Helen was silent. “What if this is our one chance to find him? You know who I am. If anyone can track something discreetly, it’s me. We could try it.”

“This won’t be your last chance,” Helen said softly. “We can’t think like that. If you open up communications and cooperate now, it’s likely they’ll send for something else. After all, everyone wants something from the great Tony Stark.”

Tony would have chuckled if not for the fear that she was right crouching deep in his chest. Maybe this all had to do with him somehow and Peter had gotten caught in the middle. He couldn’t stand not knowing.

“But really it depends,” Helen said, “on how confident you are that you can do it without getting caught and how much of Peter’s pain you think you’ll be risking if you do get caught. Is certain pain control worth risking for an uncertain location?”

“Not even the pain control is certain though,” Tony said. “Maybe they use it to knock him out for medical experiments and don’t give him anything afterward. Maybe they work it into their torture somehow.”

“You’re over thinking things. We don’t know enough about them to predict anything.” 

He was thinking about this the perfect amount, thank you very much. He couldn’t figure out what was going on without thinking about every option. Except for Peter being dead. That thought wasn’t useful. 

And now he had to think about how confident he really was. Was the arrogant master-of-industry Stark going to save Peter, or was the never-enough screw-up Tony going to doom him?

These guys had already shown so much advanced tech, that Tony was—maybe for the first time in his life—starting to feel unsure of himself. He still hadn’t been able to crack the face cloaking technology. And the micro-drone was something that could have been made easily by Tony, but not by many others. It had barely been visible on the video feed. The size of a large fly.

Wait, hadn’t Peter said something about a fly the night of the party?

That was one question answered. If these little things could deliver poison, he finally knew how they’d done it. Also, he was never leaving a window open again. Only drinking bottled drinks. Getting EMP screens at every door and window. The whole nine yards. 

“I can’t risk it,” Tony choked out. “I don’t know who or what I’m dealing with, and I can’t risk this chance to help Peter.”

“It’s your decision to make, but for what it’s worth, I think I agree.”

They both sat with the terrible choice they had made, it’s weight as tangible as a third person sitting on the couch between them. 

Tony voiced what he thought they were both thinking. “This still feels like betraying him. Helping the people who are hurting him.” 

This would have been like getting a sympathy card from Pepper in Afghanistan. More painful than hopeful. Why send such a token gesture at all? Why send a band-aid instead of removing the blade that kept cutting him?

“We’re helping them hurt him less.” That was like watching a mugging and insisting the mugger only use his fists instead of brass knuckles. 

Then there was Tony’s last fear. 

“What if he thinks we’re on the same side?” The words spilled out before he could damn them up. “What if he thinks we betrayed him by helping them or something? What if it makes him think we’re not coming to rescue him? What if it breaks him?” 

Helen thought before answering, which Tony appreciated. It gave him a chance to get his emotions slightly more under control. Try and dry out his eyes again. 

“He trusts you, Tony,” she finally said. “He would never think that. Once we get a chance to explain ourselves, he’ll understand why we did what we did.”

Would Tony have understood in Afghanistan? Or would it have driven him mad?

He didn’t know. But he did know that even if Peter came out of this hating him, thinking he was weak or stupid for not tracing the drone and trying to rescue him immediately, Tony could deal with that. What he couldn’t deal with was a Peter in so much pain he gave himself a heart attack. 

#

Tony didn’t sleep the rest of the night, stewing over his own response on the back of the instruction card Helen gave him. They’d decided on the message together:

“I can’t see us working together in the future, but for Peter’s sake, we’ve sent what you requested. ”

-Tony Stark

Short and simple and to the point. Not quite business heartless, but definitely less colorful than Tony had wanted. 

Tony was waiting on the balcony ten minutes to seven the next morning, clutching the note card and a depressingly small bottle from Helen.

When the drone appeared on the horizon, Tony fumbled in his pocket for a pen, adding a quick addendum after his signature. 

A promise both to the kidnappers and to Peter. 

“I will find you.”


	11. Shackled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He forced himself into a sitting position, closing his eyes and gripping the edge of the bed with white knuckled until his head stopped spinning and the pain from moving died down. 
> 
> The pain in his side had become a sharp cutting and slicing every time he breathed. He reached for the source and got a sharp prick for his trouble. 
> 
> Opening his eyes, he saw a chain snaking out from under his bloodied shirt.
> 
> His stomach one big bundle of nerves, side still stinging with each breath, he lifted up his shirt to reveal the source of the new pain.

Peter woke slowly, thoughts falling into his mind like drips from a leaky faucet.

Drip. He was cold.

Drip. And it was dark.

Drip. Oh, that’s because his eyes were still closed.

Drip. He was lying down somewhere. Somewhere soft and painful. 

Peter cracked his eyes open to look around, and the drip of thoughts turned into a fire hose.

Same stupid cell as before. Same stupid tiled ceiling. Same dim, cracked light bulb hanging overhead. Same semi-soft bed beneath him that he wanted to hate but actually really appreciated. 

This was the same place they’d dumped him last night straight from the helicopter.

He was starting to remember now. They’d refused to land until they could dose Peter with the same sedative they’d used earlier. Two shots this time. The exhaustion and confusion from that—combined with six gun-toting guards—had gotten him to this cell uneventfully. 

His shoulder wound had still hurt when he’d first been dumped on the ground—sedatives and exhaustion weren’t painkillers—but it was feeling a little better now. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore. How long had he been here?

He vaguely remembered being woken from that sleep and dragged into a brighter room for a while? And now he had the same pounding headache he got every time he woke up in the Med Bay after he’d screwed up really bad. 

But he wasn’t in the Med Bay or in the brighter room he might have remembered. He reached for his aching head and realized he wasn’t wearing handcuffs anymore. That was new.

So was the sharp pain in his side. And how much it hurt there whenever he breathed. 

This wasn’t like being poisoned before, with his throat closing up. His throat was wide open, but something was still wrong. 

He forced himself into a sitting position, closing his eyes and gripping the edge of the bed with white knuckles until his head stopped spinning and the pain from moving died down. 

The pain in his side had become a sharp cutting and slicing every time he breathed. He reached for the source and got a sharp prick for his trouble. 

Opening his eyes, he saw a chain snaking out from under his bloodied shirt.

His stomach one big bundle of nerves, side still stinging with each breath, he lifted up his shirt to reveal the source of the new pain. 

A white bandage was taped against his lower right ribs, a metal chain leading out from underneath it. The chain was covered in small spikes and must have been what Peter had accidentally grabbed before. Where the bandage pressed it against his skin, it had made rows of deep scratches, which had made the little blood stain on his shirt. 

He peeled back the bandage, gagging when he saw that the chain went right under his skin, somewhere into his abdomen. An incision a few inches long was already mostly healed around it. 

Without his headache and post-operation lethargy, he would definitely have been freaking out. There was literally a metal chain implanted in his body. Who knew how deep it went or what it was attached to. It could go all the way to his spine for all he knew. Or to his kidney or something. Were they going to us it to rip out his intestines? Or use the metal to electrocute him? Did the spikes on the chain continue on the inside? 

It was too low to be in danger of puncturing a lung, right? He tried to think back to what he’d learned in anatomy class last year. What was below the lungs? The floating ribs? The diaphragm? A sheet of muscle that creates negative pressure to draw air into the lungs. Thank you, bright orange anatomy flashcards. 

If this thing was pushing against his diaphragm, that would explain why it hurt to use those muscles by, you know, breathing, but also why he didn’t feel short of breath.

The chain led to a hole in the wall behind him, right above the bed on the wall opposite the door. Peter turned to examine it. His wrists twinged when he pressed them against the mattress, and he rubbed at his sore wrists. Were they still sore from the handcuffs or had they restrained him again? He couldn’t remember. He needed to remember. His healing should have taken care of the handcuff marks, but then again, he hadn’t had anything to eat all day, so his healing had probably slowed. 

He couldn’t see past the chain through the hole, but Peter had the sinking feeling that it was attached to something incredibly heavy and unbreakable on the other side. 

So this was what had replaced the handcuffs. 

He peeked under the bandage again, swallowing back saliva and bile. Gentle prodding revealed the chain was almost directly between his two lower ribs. If this really was a restraint to stop him from running away, it had to be anchored to something, and right now Peter’s bet was on those two ribs.

His stronger, thicker wrists had been strong enough to hold their own while pulling against the metal. His ribs? Not so much. They’d snap like wishbones. Brute-forcing his way out of these restraints wasn’t an option unless he felt like shattering a few ribs. He shuddered. Shards from that probably would puncture a lung. No thank you.

They'd probably spiked the chain so he couldn’t grab that and pull the whole anchoring contraption straight through the wall. 

So the other room he vaguely remembered had been…a medical room? For this horror-show surgery?

There were three things deeply concerning about that. 

The first thing would have been concerning for anyone. Kidnapping someone was one thing. Performing some sort of messed up operation on them was something else entirely. Peter didn’t even want to think about it, but the pain was ever-present. As was the message that he wasn’t the one in control anymore. Not even of his own body. He’d been violated. He could be sedated whenever they wanted. They could do whatever they wanted. The thought made him sick.

The second worry was specific to Spider-Man. Why hadn’t he felt anything while they were doing it? Not that he wasn’t glad he’d been put under, but nothing they had should have worked on his metabolism. Did they have someone on the team even better than Cho? Or had someone broken into the Tower and stolen painkillers? No way they wouldn’t have gotten caught.

And then there was the third thing. One didn’t surgically attach someone to a dungeon unless they expected them to be there for a long time. A really long time. 

He took a closer look around the room, wondering how long he’d be here already. How long the kidnappers thought they could keep him here and how long until Mr. Stark came and saved him. 

The scan of the room he did was baffling. 

The bed beneath him bore a brand-new set of Iron Man sheets—still creased from the package. Matching pillowcase included.

A few chains hung ominously on the wall to his right. 

A slot in the door let light in and was probably intended for prison rations to get shoved through. 

On the other side of the door stood a bookshelf—the one decorative item in the room, unless you counted the chains, which the kidnappers probably did. It held two standing picture frames and a large three-ring binder laying flat. 

The picture on the left was a smiling Pepper Potts, hair falling loose and not in business dress for once as she sat laughing on a couch.

The picture on the right was much older, showing a much young Tony Stark standing icily with a parent on either side. They were all dressed in formal wear, and the blurry shapes of people filled the background. A photo from some sort of event? 

The spine of the binder read, “The Life and Works of Tony Stark.”

What on earth? 

Not that Peter had much experience with these sort of things, but this was not what he’d expected from kidnappers. Armed guards and sedatives and chains? Of course. Warehouse basements with leaky pipes? Sure. Temperatures kept uncomfortably cold? Probably.

But a room that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a torture chamber or a grandmother’s guest room?

That hadn’t even been on his radar. 

And what was with all the Iron Man stuff? Did they know that Peter idolized the man? Or had this just been where they were going to take Mr. Stark if their kidnapping plan had succeeded on Saturday? Did they think that Mr. Stark actually used Iron Man sheets or were they going for irony? 

A little rectangle of paper that had been slid under the door drew his attention.

He stood and reached for it, hissing when it proved too far away to reach easily and the rib leash tugged at him. Rib leash was a stupid name. He’d come up with something better later. It was stopping him from reaching the bookshelf too. 

A long reach of a sticky toe got the paper to him, and he rolled his eyes when he saw it. You’ve got to be kidding. 

It was a card. A Hallmark card with an adorably bug-eyed spider on the front. A spider web in the background had words arranged in the silk, like some deranged version of Charlotte’s Web: “Get Well Soon!”

Definitely irony. They were the ironic type. What kind of weird kidnappers were these?

He flipped open the card to read the inside. A single typed messaged on one of the pages simply said, “Sedatives provided courtesy of Tony Stark. Enjoy your convalescence. Work starts tomorrow.”

So. Many. Questions.

Had Mr. Stark really sent some of his meds over? Them using the meds that had already been developed for him made more sense than random kidnappers being able to synthesize medications that had taken one of the best doctors in the world an entire month, but how had they really gotten them?

Why would Mr. Stark send something to help him without straight-up coming to rescue him? Was he somehow…in on it? Some sort of superhero test or something?

No way. Despite Mr. Stark’s crazy college years, this wasn’t anything close to the kind of hazing he’d tolerate. Maybe someone had hacked the Tower and stolen the drugs? Or someone from the inside had snuck them out? Seemed unlikely with all Mr. Stark’s security. Maybe he really had sent them. 

Footsteps approached the door, and something start beeping. Peter tried to push the thoughts of Mr. Stark’s involvement out of his mind. He’d figure that out later. After he dealt with whatever was going on here. 

The door creaked open evenly, and a man walked in who Peter had never seen before. He was average height, but built solidly. Like, brick wall solid. Those shoulders were ridiculous. Did the guy work out any other muscle group?

He turned to close the door, and Peter saw a pair of thick gloves tucked into generous back pockets. 

“Peter Parker,” the man said like a fact. “Fifteen years old. Spider-Man. Junior in high school. Midtown. Lives with Aunt May.”

Each fact was like a punch to the gut. This man was dropping them carelessly, as if they weren’t Peter’s most precious secrets to be kept from people like him. 

“You should be touring college campuses, instead you’re touring Tony Stark’s labs and the alleys of Queens. Why is that?”

That had to be a rhetorical question. Who wouldn’t want to tour Mr. Stark’s labs? He held his tongue. Better to wait until he had a feel for the purpose of this visit. Although nobody had followed the man in, and he was still rib-tied to the wall, so he probably wasn’t being taken anywhere. 

“Fine, don’t be conversational if you don’t want to,” the man said easily. “I just came in to say thank you.”

Thank you? For what? Peter wanted to ask but it felt like he’d be taking some sort of conversational bait he’d left hanging for him. He went with sarcasm. Don’t show you’re confused or afraid. Just be witty. It was something he was already great at as Spider-Man, but hanging around Mr. Stark had made him even sharper. He thought so at least. Couldn’t be sure. 

“You could have just sent another card,” he said more confidently than he felt as he held up the get-well card.

“They didn’t have any spider-themed thank you cards, and this was personal enough to deliver face to face.” 

“Yeah, but a card would have told me your name by now.”

“Fair enough, since I know yours. Here, most people call me the Forgemaster.”

Right. Not happening. 

“Yeah, I’m not using your angsty LiveJournal username in real life.”

“Also fair. We’ll be working together in the future, so you can use my given name. I’m Mark.” 

Just a first name, like they were already colleagues, if not friends. Not even anything to put a Mr. in front of to keep distance between them. (Or politeness, like in the case of Mr. Stark, but that definitely wasn’t what he was going for here.)

“Okay, Mark. What could you possibly have to thank me for?” He was taking the bait. This conversation was taking too long. 

“For giving me such an interesting problem to solve.” He gestured to the rib cuffs. Okay, that was a little better than rib leash. “I’d thought the wrist cuffs would be enough, but these rib shackles are a true work of art, if I do say so myself.”

He had to give it to him. Rib shackles was a better name than rib leash or rib cuff. 

“They’re one of my more original inventions I think. And I never would have been forced to invent them without your resourcefulness.” A man who relishes a challenge then. And some kind of inventor. This conversation was starting to go places, although Peter still didn’t know how he factored into the equation.

“Don’t forget to add my name to the patent,” he joked. How would this man take the suggestion of sharing credit?

“One taste with Stark, and you’re hungry for more, eh?” 

Mark didn’t look bothered in the slightest. So not very territorial about his work, then? Peter really needed to practice reading people.

“Don’t worry, you’ll at least get a decent foot note. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll feature prominently in the ad campaign.” He spread he hand through the sky like he was drawing a sign. “Keeps even the great Spider-man down. I’ll have to talk to my marketing team about that one though.”

“Yeah, I think you might run into some PR problems,” Peter said, trying to sound like Pepper. “I’ll talk to my people though.” 

“No one would care in the circles I’d be advertising in. Ideally, you need a medical degree to install them, so the applications are limited. But I managed, didn’t I?” 

His cold smile took Peter’s breath away.

“So the applications are still there. Which reminds me, how are we feeling? Did I do my job well enough? Stark’s sedatives sure did the job, and you don’t sound like you’ve punctured a lung, but what’s the pain level? 1-10, please, with 1 being chipper and 10 being dead.”

“2 out of 10 stars,” Peter spat out, ignoring the mention of Mr. Stark’s involvement. “Would not recommend to raging psychopaths everywhere.”

“Great, that’ll be the first review up on black market Amazon. I’ll have to make a fake account for you, but you won’t mind, right? Since you’ll probably be dead.” Peter was pretty sure he was joking—at least about the black market Amazon thing—but he was going to mention it to Mr. Stark when he got out of here. Better safe than sorry. 

“You know me,” Peter kept a chipper tone despite the macabre reminder that the other man held all the cards, “always glad to help out small, local businesses. Usually that means buying churros and spider-man snow globes though.” This conversation was still going nowhere, so Peter decided to drill harder. “Supporting creative ways to profit from hurting innocent people is a new one. Not sure I like it.”

“It’s the oldest one in the world.” Mark looked almost pleased at the shift in topic. What a psycho. “You’re just too naive for your own good.”

“So I should grow up to be more like you?” Peter scoffed. “I’ll have to check how many spots are left open for Psychopathy and Torturing Innocents majors at the community college. Never too late to switch.”

“First of all, there’s no such thing as an innocent.” 

Man, did nothing make this guy angry? 

“Second of all, I thought that was already your area of study. What else could Tony Stark possibly be teaching you? That was his MO for a decade.”

“Hey!” Peter said without meaning to. “He didn’t torture people!”

“No, he just sold the weapons that did.” The man snapped his fingers, like he’d just realized something. Like this was some high school debate instead of a maniacal rant. “Just like Toomes.” 

Peter blanched a little at the name. 

“That’s right, I read all about your little conquest in the papers. Your first big break, right? First real publicity? Who’s profiting off of villainy now?”

He chuckled at his own joke, then continued. “Toomes just sold the weapons, didn’t pull the trigger himself. Well, he got sort of violent and crazy once you showed up and started messing with things, but before that, he was just the seller. Just a smaller-scale Stark.”

“That’s not the same at all,” Peter sputtered, knowing down to his core that Mark was totally wrong, but unable to find the words to prove him so. “Toomes was stealing stuff that wasn’t his,” he tried. “And he was selling to bad people. Mr. Stark only wanted to sell to good people.”

“Who’s to say who’s good or bad? They were both Grade-A inventors who ended up selling to everyone.” Mark sounded like he wanted nothing more than to be exactly that. “The point is that Stark is to blame for every misfire of a Stark weapon, just like Toomes is responsible for every alien weapon discharged in New York City in the last decade.”

“It’s not all on them. It’s on the people who pulled the triggers.”

“Then why did you go after Toomes instead of going after the trigger-pullers?” 

Because you’re better off turning off the hose than trying to catch all the water coming out? But somehow Mark had tied Mr. Stark and Toomes together in his head, and he couldn’t defend one without worrying he was defending the other. 

“That’s what I thought,” Mark said as Peter still fished for what to say. “There are still plenty of Stark weapons out there in third world countries doing damage, and that’s on him as much as Toomes’s weapons are on him.”

“And yours are on you?” Peter said. “And you don’t care about that?”

Mark smiled coldly. “I’m an Oppenheimer. The man who created the atomic bomb knew where the blame lay. He didn’t have his finger on the trigger either, but what did he say? ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I think that was it.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Brilliant inventor or no (and that was based mostly on Mark’s own claims, so Peter still doubted it), this guy was nuts. Anyone who thought of being a destroyer of worlds as a career aspiration needed serious help. 

“Tony Stark seems to be.”

Mark had to be baiting him, and it seemed he just wasn’t going to leave it alone.

“What do you have against Mr. Stark?” He gestured to the weirdness of the room decor around him. 

“Nothing. I admire him. It’s just sad he won’t embrace who he really is. If he accepted that, we could be on the same side.”

“Mr. Stark will never be on your side. He’s a good person.” It was probably futile to argue, but Peter couldn’t just sit around while he said such stupid things. “A different person than when he used to sell weapons. When he figured out what was going on, he shut down weapons manufacturing. He’s added medical research bran—.”

“And he helped Spider-man get a kitten from a tree and he takes his favorite intern out for ice cream, yada yada yada, I’ve seen the fluffy press pieces. He’s learned to compartmentalize, just like we all do. But he’s still sitting on the biggest weapons potential our generation has ever seen: the arc reactor.”

“That’s a clean energy source, not a weapon!”

“And what’s the first thing he did with it besides save his own skin? Make a weapon. It’s in his blood. I’d venture to say that the Iron Man technology is the second biggest weapon potential breakthrough of our generation, although I’m working on something that will hopefully knock it down to third place.”

Okay, he had a point about immediately building a weapon, but that had been extenuating circumstances. He’d been kidnapped, not unlike Peter right now. It mattered more how Mr. Stark used the weapons he made today than what he did back then. 

“Then why hasn’t he profited from those yet, Mr. Business of Torture?” Peter asked. Mark looked like he was humoring him, waiting for Peter to make his point. “Because he’s a good person. He’s trying to keep them away from people like you even though he could make billions with them.”

“He’s reached the point where money doesn’t matter, good for him. He just won’t accept the fact that he’s become death. Now he’s just trying to keep everyone else’s fingers off the triggers of the guns he’s loaded. But deep down he knows the same thing I do. There’s only one thing a weapon is good for, and no amount of good intentions can stop it.” 

Peter knew Mr. Stark regretted what his weapons had done in the past—that it was part of his big change and the invention of Iron Man, but he didn’t hold it against him. He couldn’t.

Peter shook his head stubbornly. “But he’s a good person.”

“He’s learned to compartmentalize and justify. All villains do. It’s how we sleep at night. Nothing is bad”—he gestured to the rib shackle—"if you decide the person you’re doing it to is worse.” He gestured to the rest of Peter’s person. 

What was that supposed to mean? How was Peter or Spider-man somehow worse than kidnapping?

“You can’t just weigh actions against people. That’s an impossible equation. It’s apples and oranges. How can you say that I’m bad enough to justify kidnapping? How do you decide?”

The man shrugged. “I just did. It’s not like I have to fill out a form or win a court case. You just get a feel for it after a while.”

Peter just stared at him. He’d seemed at least twistedly rational up until this point. “You’re nuts.”

The man laughed again and stood. “Nope. I’ve just become death. Death doesn’t both with paperwork or second opinions, and neither do I. And neither does Tony Stark.”

“Some things are always bad, like killing and torture,” Peter said, almost more to reassure himself more than try and convince Mark. “No matter who you do them to.”

Mark just stared at Peter for a minute, then sighed. “You even more naive than I thought. You’re saying you’ve never killed anyone in all your time swinging around webbing up the dregs of New York City?”

“Never had to.”

“Toomes might have died when you crashed that plane.”

“I saved him.” 

He burst out a short laugh. “Of course you did. I see why Tony Stark must keep you around. You’re the moral weight that’s going to balance out all his past sins. If he helps create you, he gets to benefit from all the moral triggers you pull. Or literally don’t, as the case may be.” 

Peter set aside the idea that Mr. Stark is only using him as a way to assuage his guilt conscience. That was a spiral for another day. 

Mark continued. “And about that ‘torturing and killing is always wrong’ dream you’ve got going on? Ask Black Widow about that sometime, if you ever see her again. She’ll teach you a thing or two about becoming a destroyer of worlds.” His eyes darkened suddenly, focusing on the air in between them. 

“Not as much as you could teach me.” Peter wasn’t sure how much sarcasm he’d managed to fit into that statement next to all the fear. 

“Or Tony Stark.” There was that cold smile again. “Don’t start up a business major, son. A bleeding heart like you will get eaten alive.” 

Mark opened the door and produced a door stop from his pocket, wedging the door wide open. 

“That’s how confident I am in my new invention. My quarters are third floor, room 312. Feel free to attempt an escape or some revenge and force me to invent something even better. I’d relish the opportunity.” 

He was ten feet down the corridor before Peter thought to yell out, “You still haven’t told me why I’m here.” He was just starting to realize how little he’d learned from their conversation but how much the kidnapper had enjoyed it. He was still working at a huge disadvantage here. 

“I was just coming to get to know you and say thank you,” Mark’s voice echoed back. “The real fun starts tomorrow.”

And then he was gone. 

A door slamming behind him might have provided a nice close to the conversation and given Peter some privacy, but the doorstop held it open tauntingly, pushed all the way against the wall where Peter couldn’t reach it.

Peter slid back against the far wall on the bed and stared down the portal—so close to and so far from being an escape route—and wondered where it would take him tomorrow.


	12. Shaky Hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sharp chain tethering Peter’s ribs to the cell wall woke him several times throughout the night. The spikes cut into his skin as he tossed and turned, wincing himself back to sleep.
> 
> But it was hunger that woke him for good.

The sharp chain tethering Peter’s ribs to the cell wall woke him several times throughout the night. The spikes cut into his skin as he tossed and turned, wincing himself back to sleep.

But it was hunger that woke him for good.

A deep pit gurgled in his stomach. He’d been so worried about everything else going on, he hadn’t given food a second thought. But he hadn’t had time for breakfast yesterday, and they hadn’t given him anything since then. Not that it would have helped, with all the throwing up he’d done on the van ride over, but he could have stomached something last night after the operation. Were you allowed to eat after operations?

He sat up on the bed, staring at the still open door and knowing he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. He felt shaky all over. Not as bad as yesterday after the epi-pens, but this shaking was accompanied by a fragile weakness in his limbs and a dull pounding in his head. He just wanted to go back to sleep. 

He’d spent some time last night trying to pull at the chain, seeing if his sticky fingers could grasp the sides of the spikes well enough to pull at them, but they were too small to get any purchase. He’d cut his fingers up so much that there was blood drying on the chains, but they were nearly healed now. 

The chains still kept the bookshelf next to the door out of reach, although Peter was painfully bored and curious to see what was in the binder about Mr. Stark. 

He turned his head when the wall next to him started beeping. One of the panels of the wall rolled up, revealing a brightly lit room, and making Peter squint. 

Peter stood and moved toward it, forgetting about the rib tether until it jerked him back. 

Mark’s burly frame appeared in the new doorway. 

“Ready for your first day of work?”

Peter just glared. 

Mark pulled a small remote from his pocket and pressed a few buttons. Peter flinched as a shuddering vibration worked its way through the chain.

“Let’s see the Forge.” Mark jerked his head to the new room and Peter tentatively followed. When he reach the limit that had pulled him back before, the chain retracted out easily, giving him more room with only a light tug. So it was retractable. Good to know. But only when Mark wanted it to be. Maybe the remote had a way to release it too. Or to reel him back in. Mark was watching him closely, so he tucked that information away to ponder later and stepped into the room. 

It looked like a smaller, less shiny version of Mr. Stark’s lab. More dark metal. Less red and gold. The walls were lined with accoutrements needed for chemical or mechanical experiments, vent hoods, bottles filling cabinets, tool sets, a few vice grips. Hey, maybe Peter could find stuff to make his web fluid in here!

“This looks like a lab, not a forge.”

“It’s mostly symbolic,” Mark admitted, “but there actually is a small forge in the wall over there. There also more metal-working gear here than you’re used to.” What did it matter what he was used to? Why was he showing him this lab anyway?

“And you think I’m going to work in here because…” Peter trailed off, leaving Mark to fill in the blank. The huge gaping blank in the middle of this whole messed up situation. 

“Because it’s your only chance of escape.”

“You want me to…invent my own escape?”

I mean, he knew the guy was an inventor himself. But that still didn’t make much sense. Why kidnap someone if you were going to help them escape?

“Or at least try. There should be everything in here you need.”

“And some things that I don’t.” Peter pointed to a top-of-the-line coffee maker with a popped eyebrow. “You know I’m fifteen, right?”

“This lab wasn’t designed for you. Everyone knows Stark can’t function without his coffee.”

Things fell a little more in place. The room he thought might have been for Mr. Stark. The lab that definitely was. Whatever Peter was here for, it wasn’t because he was Peter Parker or Spider-Man. It was because he knew Mr. Stark. Somehow this was all about Mr. Stark. 

“You thought Mr. Stark would work for you?”

“Given the proper incentives, yes. Escape can be a powerful one.”

“You know, things didn’t turn out very well for the last people who kidnapped him and forced him to slave away in a lab.” He felt confident that Mr. Stark would relish a remake of that violent jailbreak once he discovered this place. 

“They’re not me.” Mark’s confidence was unsettling. “If they’d been more observant and cleverer and actually had some decent surveillance, they would have been able to reproduce the portable arc reactor and Iron Man tech he developed right under their noses. So I’m actually hoping for a bit of a repeat.”

Time to state the obvious. Bad guys always seemed to be missing something important.

“They couldn’t reproduce the tech because Mr. Stark blew them up.”

“As I said, they’re not me.” The cold smile from the night before crept onto his face. But that didn’t explain why Peter was here, although he had an inkling. 

“But Mr. Stark’s not here.”

Mark’s face darkened. “As I’m well aware. Your clumsiness ruined a very carefully planned kidnapping, so I had to settle for second best.” He gestured to Peter with a look of disappointment. “You’ve invented with him before, so maybe you won’t be completely useless. And your spider powers might be interesting for my colleagues to study if you fail here, although I hope it won’t come to that. I have little interest in arachnids.”

Peter’s hands shook harder, and he clenched them into fists to stop them. They wanted to study his spider powers, did they? The knowledge drew his mind back to the unwilling surgery from last night. The first of many, he expected, if Mark’s colleagues had any say. The subtle threat made his head spin, but he was still a little bit grateful, a little bit proud he’d been able to protect Mr. Stark from something, even accidentally. 

“The game’s not up yet though,” Mark said. “I might still get what I want. Invent something to escape. I dare you.”

Yeah, because Peter was that easy to bait. 

“But do you double-dog dare me?”

Mark rolled his eyes. 

“I give you a lab, you give me an escape-worthy invention, and we’ll call this whole thing even.”

“You know, there are more normal ways of hiring help,” Peter rambled as his mind raced. “Job fairs or Craigslist or networking or something.” He wasn’t really sure how one got a job, but those all sounded like decent options. What was he going to do? He couldn’t just work for this guy. Let him steal Peter’s work and use it for anything he wanted. 

“Think of this as an internship.” Mark said. “A learning opportunity. Mr. Stark had Afghanistan. You have here.” 

That definitely hadn’t been an internship, and neither was this.

“I already have an internship.”

“Yes, but I have to wonder what you’ve been learning there. Your mentor would have already begun working to escape by now. The question is what will you do? Just how much has Tony Stark forged you in his own image?”

How dare he imagine he knew what Mr. Stark would do. Like Mr. Stark would immediately shake hands with this psycho and they’d start doing calculations together like Peter had done so often with him in the lab. 

“So let’s get started,” Mark rubbed his hands together and looked around the lab. “A good inventor needs to know his materials.”

“I don’t need to know anything because I’m not doing anything.” His voice quavered only slightly. From nerves, from weakness, from hunger, from anger. “I’m not helping you. I’m not your lab monkey, and I’m not going to invent stuff for you for the rest of my life.”

“Weren’t you listening? Not forever. Just until you escape or decide to work with me on a long-term basis. But that’s fine. You can just stand here for 10 hours a day. I don’t mind. But keep in mind that I only feed workers who are being productive. Nothing personal. Just a matter of policy. That’s business for you.” 

True to his word, Mark didn’t even look bothered by Peter’s refusal. He certainly wasn’t taking it personally, seemed to think he had all the time in the world to convince Peter. Did he really think Mr. Stark wouldn’t find him? 

Peter had nothing to say to that. He’d just wait until Mr. Stark found him. That would take a day or two, tops. 

“A word to the wise. That chain will lock up like a seat belt if you move too fast. It will pull you back into your quarters when the work day is done. And if you use your inventing time to mess with that chain, you’d better hope you can finish before we spot you on the cameras and get in here. Or before we can get to the button that electrifies it.”

Mark walked toward a set of sliding glass doors across the room Peter hadn’t noticed before. “Let me know when you’re ready for the rest of orientation.”

The doors hissed shut, leaving Peter standing in the middle of an assortment of machines and tools, only half of which he recognized on sight. His hands were still shaking—from nerves, from weakness, from hunger, from fear.

The door to his room slipped shut too. Guess he was in here for the next ten hours. Fine. 

He pulled a stool out from under one of the tables and perched on it. 

He could wait Mark out. He could wait for Mr. Stark. Hunger was just a feeling. He could live with it for a few days. This was no internship or Afghanistan or whatever Mark had been ranting about. He hadn’t thought of a way to escape yet, although some of the tools around him tempted him to try. 

But he wasn’t going to help Mark. He’d hold out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story won't be updated again until November 2nd or 3rd. My first book just got accepted for publication, the publisher sent me edits back today, and they’re only giving me a week to do rewrites. How dare they get in the way of my fanfiction writing, haha. Anyway, I'll be back in a week to keep going on this story. Whumptober for me is going to have to extend into...Nowhumpber? Novembewhump? Whumpvember? Something like that. See you all in a week! Wish me luck!
> 
> Also, I updated the story summary so it’s actually descriptive now. Enjoy.


	13. Dehydration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today, day three of hunger and thirst, he was laying flat on his back in the middle of the floor, a scientific journal folded open on his chest.  
  
He’d finished reading Mark’s article in it maybe an hour ago? It was hard to say. His vision was too blurry to see the clock on the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! Rewriting an 86k word book in a week because my publisher’s timelines are intense sucks the writing soul a bit dry. But I’m back in this story and hoping for every other day posts until the end of November. Or Whumpvember, as I’m calling it. Gotta finish this story somehow!

Peter held out for nearly three days. 

He spent the work hours, as Mark called them, sitting on a stool or leaning against a table leg. When curiosity got the best of him, he poked around the lab’s cupboards and counters, marveling at all the equipment. Bottles and chemicals and machinery scattered throughout and more metal-working gear than Peter had ever seen in his life clustered together in a corner around an anvil and a large forge in the wall. 

There was definitely enough stuff here for Peter to make his web fluid and probably new webshooters with, not that he was going to give away that formula to Mad Mark by making it in front of the cameras. The last thing he needed was for bad guys to be able to imitate him or frame him using his own webbing. 

When boredom got the best of him, he utilized the bookshelf in the far corner of the room. Mark couldn’t benefit from anything he kept inside his head, and he may as well use his time here to learn something, right? Make up for all the school he was missing. Man, he was going to be swamped with homework when he got back. 

He’d found a bunch of scholarly articles written by Mark about his research and inventions and read them, trying to get a feel for who he was. His work ranged all over the place, but most of it eventually narrowed down to dealing with a metal he claimed to have invented called caminium. He’d applied it to everything from biometric enhancements and computer hardware to weapon designs and casings for power sources. Not a word about creepy restraints or torture devices. Based purely on his professional persona, Peter never would have guessed him capable of kidnapping anyone. He seemed almost genius-level smart, based on the frenetic pace at which he published articles. Some were dated as recently as a few months ago. How did he have time to organize elaborate kidnapping schemes when he was doing all this research? 

Peter found most of the research pretty boring. The stats on caminium were mildly interesting, but Peter didn’t know how to work with metals, and he had no real interest in learning how. Chemistry had always been his thing. But the research had given him one important piece of information: Mark’s last name. Carpaccio. Mark Carpaccio.

Peter couldn’t do anything with that now, but it had to be enough to track him down once he escaped. And if this guy went for a ransom call or proof of life thing, maybe blurting out his name would be enough for Mr. Stark to find him. Or he could make that his method of escape, try and send out a signal from the lab with Mark’s name in it. What could he build that would send the signal the furthest?

Wait, no, he wasn’t inventing anything. He was still waiting. Waiting for Mr. Stark. Which was starting to feel hopeless.

Today, day three of hunger and thirst, he was laying flat on his back in the middle of the floor, a scientific journal folded open on his chest. He’d finished reading Mark’s article in it maybe an hour ago? It was hard to say. His vision was too blurry to see the clock on the wall. It was why he’d stopped reading partway through the next random article. He’d only started that one because he was too exhausted to re-shelve the journal and find the next Mark article from the bookshelf. Laying here sounded way more fun. You know, as fun as being locked away on hunger strike in a psycopath’s lab could be. 

The only thing that might be more fun would be looking through that “Life and Works of Tony Stark” binder Maniac Mark had left in his room. He hadn’t been able to read it yet. It was far away from the door, and the one time he’d remembered to grab for it as the chain reeled him in at the end of the day, it had been just out of reach. The day after that, he’d been too tired and dizzy to even try. Today, he thought he’d be lucky to make it back to the room at all. 

The rumbling of his stomach had become nearly constant, and his mouth was so dry that it felt like leather. His lips had started to crack and bleed. Being kidnapped was the worst.

And the icing on top of the whole crummy cake was the cold symptoms that had surfaced yesterday. It had taken Peter almost an entire day to recognize them. His spider powers had warded off colds and flus for so long he’d almost forgotten what they felt like. Was something messing with his powers and letting him get sick now? Or were muscle aches and a low fever symptoms of dehydration?

If only Mark had a first aid book on that bookshelf. 

May always touted fluids and blankets as the best cure for colds. He’d have to ask her what she recommended when one was stuck in a lab with no fluids or blankets readily available. Maybe he should ask if Mark’s lab monkey gig came with a health care plan. 

A harsh alarm sounded for a few seconds before falling into echoes, dragging Peter from his erratic thoughts. The five-minute warning. Peter could begrudgingly admit that it was considerate of Mark to give warning before using the rib shackle to haul him back to his room at the end of the work day. If he were actually working, he’d probably need the time to wrap up experiments or put things away. Now, he had a few minutes to get ready to stand up. 

Pulling the journal off his chest, Peter snapped it shut. This one had been more confusing than yesterday’s reading. Whether that was to blame on the book itself or Peter’s pounding skull, he wasn’t sure.

He took almost a whole minute to psych himself up for movement. Rolling to his hands and knees, he paused for a moment before hauling himself up with the table. 

Standing made his head pound even harder, and the room pendulummed back and forth with every throb of his heartbeat. His vision faded out and he clutched at the table, scolding himself for gripping too hard and ruining the smooth steel of the table. But when he pulled his hands back and his vision cleared a little, he couldn’t see any finger marks. He was definitely losing strength. Not a good sign. 

The walk to the bookshelf took an eternity, and the little black clouds at the side of his vision followed him the whole way. He stood on his tiptoes to put the book back on the top shelf where he’d gotten it, the strain making his sore muscles ache. At the exertion, the black clouds swept over his vision completely. The journal toppled backward over Peter’s shaky hand and he dropped back to his heels, grabbing at the bookshelf, but his weak hands couldn’t hold the rest of him up when his knees gave out and he fell backwards into darkness.

#

The same dripping as always dragged Peter back to consciousness. This time, a heartbeat next to him beat time with it. Peter cracked an eye open and looked over to see Mark. Of course Mark. He’d dragged one of the lab stools near the head of Peter’s bed and was watching him with vague curiosity. 

“Did you bring another card?” Peter asked, his voice cracking. His throat felt was so dry it hurt to talk.

Mark half-smirked, but it fell away quickly. Did he look actually…worried? About Peter? He had to be seeing things.

“Your dedication to your ideals is admirable,” Mark said, leaning onto his knees and lacing his hands together. “But ultimately it’s futile.”

“Seems to be working just fine so far,” Peter mumbled, trying to convince his raging appetite and burning muscles that it was worth it. And his dry mouth. Maybe he should have started there, because that was definitely hurting the most right now. 

“It will, for a few more days maybe,” Mark admitted. “Then you’ll die and never see your loved ones again. MJ. May. Mr. Stark. We’ll ship them your body back because we’re not monsters, and they’ll have a sweet little funeral and cry and bury you in the ground and wish you’d done something, anything to keep yourself alive. But it will be too late.”

Well, that escalated quickly. 

Not that Mark was wrong. That was where this was headed if Mr. Stark couldn’t find him and Peter’s I-don’t-work-for-psychos policy continued to clash with Mark’s I-only-feed-productive-kidnappees policy. Mark showed no sign of breaking his policy, so now it was up to Peter to decide if his own policy was worth dying for. 

Images of MJ and Ned sitting alone in the school cafeteria floated into his mind. Then of May and Mr. Stark standing over his grave. Maybe they’d be proud of him for bring so strong.

“I won’t help you. Mr. Stark wouldn’t want me to.” Peter wasn’t sure he believed that. He had definitely never asked, which was a move he was regretting now. When he got rescued, he was going to sit down with Mr. Stark and go over every possible superhero scenario and how best to act to not get killed or do things he’d regret later. Mr. Stark always knew what to do. 

“Mr. Stark has been in this exact situation before,” Mark said. “And he did what you’re refusing to.”

And they were back to the Afghanistan thing. 

“That was different. They tortured him.”

“And you’re torturing yourself. What’s the difference? I could step in and help with the torture, but I doubt that’s what you meant when you said that.”

No. Definitely not. He wasn’t really sure what he was saying anymore. Wasn’t really sure was Mark was saying. Maybe Peter could talk Mr. Stark into giving him arguing-with-villain lessons when he got back too. It was ridiculous that it took being kidnapped for him to realize how bad he was at it. Maybe he could join the debate team. Maybe he could just ask Mark for some tips. 

“The real question you need to ask yourself is this,” Mark said, pulling Peter’s attention back to the present moment. He had leaned in so close that Peter could smell minty toothpaste on his breath. “Do you think Tony Stark was wrong to escape? Was he wrong to give in and show his captors how to build an arc reactor and the Iron Man suit? Should he have just let himself die, like you’re doing?”

No. Definitely not. Then the world wouldn’t have Iron Man. Then he wouldn’t have Iron Man. 

“Then you shouldn’t either,” Mark said, seeming to know what Peter was thinking. “Mr. Stark would be more upset you didn’t try to save yourself than if you gave up an invention by doing do.”

The idea of facing Mr. Stark after all this, however he escaped, and admitting he’d made something that helped the bad guys made a pit in Peter’s stomach that managed to interrupt its starved gurglings. He’d have to face that disappointed face. That one that had nearly made him cry after the ferry. Dead might be easier than seeing that again. 

But even as he thought it, he didn’t really mean it. He couldn’t do that to May, to MJ, or to Mr. Stark. Principles or no, his life was worth more to all of them than whatever half-baked invention he could make to get himself out of here. He’d been betting on a rescue, but there hadn’t been a peep. Mark seemed just as confident as he’d been on the first day. 

It was up to Peter to save himself. 

Which, without his Spider-Man suit, was a terrifying prospect. 

He didn’t have years of inventing experience. He didn’t have years of research behind him. 

This was no Afghanistan. And he was no Tony Stark. 

“Fine,” Peter croaked.

The smile that broke out on Mark’s face made him regret his decision instantly. “Glad to see your self-preservation instincts aren’t completely dead. I’ll get an IV for fluids in here and give you a crust of bread or something. The real meal comes tomorrow when you prove you’re actually going to work.”

“No IV,” Peter said. There was no way to make sure there was nothing else in there. 

“It’ll rehydrate you faster—”

Peter’s shaking head made him stop. 

“Fine, I’ll bring in a glass of water. Easier for me anyway. Don’t drink too much at once or you’ll throw it up.”

Peter nodded vaguely, hating how this creep’s voice had the same edge of concern May’s did when he wasn’t feeling well. He closed his eyes, listening to Mark stand and leave the room and feeling the rising panic that was roaring up in his chest. He tried to calm it as he waited for Mark to return. This is your choice. You want this. This is a good idea. 

He almost believed himself. Imagining May weeping over his grave next to Ben’s convinced him even more. 

He had to try. He couldn’t let them ship him back in a body bag. That wasn’t helping anyone. And if he did find a way to escape, Mr. Stark would help him track this guy down and deal with him. Mark wouldn’t be able to use anything he could get from Peter once he escaped because Mr. Stark would find him and stop him. 

And Mr. Stark would understand, right? Even if the bad guy got away. He wouldn’t judge Peter for being hungry and thirsty and weak. And even if he did, it was better than being dead. 

It was time to get to work.


	14. Explosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sprinklers sputtered to life above him, bringing back the freezing sensation. Water mixed with blood swirled on the floor in front of him. He could see it approaching his face, which had fallen back to the ground sometime when he wasn’t paying attention, but he was powerless to move out of its way. It didn’t matter anyway. Everything else was probably bloody, why not his face too?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the changed tags/warning. This scene gets intense.

Peter hadn’t seen Mark for ten days. No words. No cards. Nothing since a slap on the back the first morning Peter had really started working and a brief orientation around the lab. The forge. Whatever. 

Mark had spent forever describing the metal-working gear, the top-of-the-line forge inset into the wall, and the properties of his precious caminium until Peter had accused him of villainous monologuing. That had actually made Mark look annoyed, the first crack in his surprisingly calm villain persona. 

Or maybe it was his real persona. Did villains have evil personas they slipped on like Peter had his cocky Spider-Man one? Or were villains villainous through and through? Toomes had sure seemed more complex than to be classified as a pure villain, but the jury was still out on Mark. 

Their only contact since Peter had started working to escape in earnest was a tray of food slid through a hatch in either the lab door or the room door three times a day. Just a tray with the barest of rations on it. Usually some kind of sandwich and a piece of fruit. He’d gotten a pudding cup a few times, which he’d eaten even though it made him feel like a grade-schooler again. 

It wasn’t really enough for his heightened metabolism, but it was better than starving. Peter wasn’t sure if Mark wasn’t feeding him enough intentionally or if he legitimately didn’t know squat about his biology. Peter doubted he’d ask, even if given the opportunity. Keeping as much information as possible from Mark was his top priority now. Maybe he’d get lucky and get a food raise once he actually accomplished something. That’s how jobs worked right? And he was basically only getting paid in food, so it made sense. As much sense as Mark’s ridiculous plan, that was for sure. 

He was splitting his time three-ways in the lab, shifting between tasks whenever he got bored. He had finished reading all of Mark’s articles and was studying a few other topics that interested him from the bookshelf. He would have spent all his time doing that, but he doubted Mark would count that as full-time work. So he had two other projects that would look more convincing to Mark. 

The first was a radio he was trying to build. A long-range communication device that he could use to transmit a message to Mr. Stark. He hadn’t done much experimenting in the area before, so it was slow going. 

His second project was more up his alley. Chemical reactions. He was staying far away from the web formula he’d developed that actually worked. Instead he was trying to recreate a super early version he’d secretly made in a deep drawer of his second period chemistry class. It had eaten through the glass beaker he’d been mixing it in, as well as the hot plate it had been sitting on, and had only stopped when it reached the bottom of the wooden drawer, where it had solidified into a goopy black mess that had stained the drawer permanently. 

The fumes coming off it should have given away to the teacher that something was terribly wrong, but Flash had managed to catch his project on fire at almost the same moment, so the smell got blamed on him as well. Peter felt a little bad about that. Even more so about the hot plate that he’d taken home intending to fix. It had been toasted beyond repair. 

Thinking about lab, where Ned shared his table, made Peter’s heart twist. He’d be gone for almost two weeks. Ned would be frantic. May would be even more frantic. MJ would probably still be pissed at getting dragged into this, but maybe she’d feel bad enough about Peter being kidnapped for so long that she’d already started forgiving him. Mr. Stark probably hadn’t slept in a week and had holed himself up in his lab. That’s where he hid whenever there was a problem he couldn’t crack. 

Peter dragged his attention back to reading project at hand: a manila folder of files specially curated by Mark. The compilation of blueprints stared uselessly back. They were mostly stats on a variety of Mark’s inventions, most of them involving caminium. The most interesting thing he’d found so far was a tiny drone capable of carrying light objects, dropping a payload, or shooting a single loaded dart. Bingo! He’d found what had poisoned Mr. Stark’s drink and set off Peter’s spider sense at the party. It was probably also what had darted him in the street. 

The folder also had a few blueprints of Mr. Stark’s inventions, albeit the more benign ones. But tucked at the back were a few theorized blueprints of the arc reactor and Iron Man technology. Peter didn’t know what he was supposed to do with those. He’d helped with minor repairs on old Iron Man suits in the lab before, but he didn’t know enough to say how accurate these designs were. And he certainly didn’t have a clue about the arc reactor technology. 

But he had to remember that Mark had prepped this lab for Mr. Stark…which didn’t make these best-guess blueprints make any more sense. Did he think Mr. Stark had forgotten how to make his most important tech from memory? Did he think would have been so annoyed at the mistakes in the folder that he’d fix them himself for Mark to review later? 

Merely glancing at the blueprints made Peter miss Mr. Stark’s lab more than ever. The bright, shiny metal, the Iron Legion standing at the ready in their glass cases, the blaring music that Mr. Stark loved and that Peter loved to tease him about. 

But all he had here was silence. He hadn’t found a way to play music in the lab, and the silence was getting to him. He could hear every click and whir of the machinery around him. The air conditioner roared to life every twenty minutes or so. The chink of glass beakers colliding rung like church bells. Even the crackling embers of the forge had a sort of pattern to it that Peter was learning. 

He found the forge lit when he came into the lab each morning, although he’d yet to use it for anything except heating the room. Mark kept things colder than Peter liked it, and without thermostat controls, he liked leaving the forge door open as he worked to warm the room. 

He suspected that Mark came in each night to change the coals or turn it off and back on in the morning or whatever one did with a forge because sometimes things had been moved around in the lab during the night. It would have been disconcerting finding his notes flipped through if this entire situation weren’t already at maximum disconcerting levels. 

When he found himself tapping a screwdriver like a drumstick along to the erratic beat of the embers popping, Peter knew he was going to crazy if he were here alone for much longer. Normally he talked to himself while he worked, conversationally working through problems. If he were truly alone, he might have even imagined that Ned was next to him or on the phone with him, joking about the same stupid stuff they usually did during chemistry class. 

But the eyes of the cameras around the room kept his mouth shut. He would work, but he would make sure Mark understood as little as possible. About him and about whatever he was working on. Even his notes were much sparser than usual. It had slowed him down a little, but it would slow down Mark even more. Assuming Peter ever made anything that Mark would care about replicating. Which as of now was looking unlikely. 

The only idea he sort of had was to replicate that acidic compound that had accidentally eaten through glass and metal in his chemistry class. Pushing the blueprints folder away from him, he grabbed his notebook, reviewing the shorthand notes he’d made over the past week. 

He should have studied the accident right when it had happened, but he’d been too freaked out about possibly being discovered and ruining a hot plate that the school had needed to replace. He wasn’t even sure why the compound had stopped eating through things and become dormant. Did it happen after a certain period of time? After a certain volume of chemical reactions? After striking and trying to dissolve something organic like wood? 

The metal lab door slamming open was loud enough to knock Peter off his stool in surprise. He scrambled to his feet, leaving the folder and blueprints where they’d floated to the floor in favor of watching Mark stomp into the lab. 

After more than a week of total silence, Mark’s heavy footsteps and booming voice assaulted Peter’s eardrums. 

“I’ve tried to be patient, but you’re useless at this! Stark would have been in and out of here three times over by now.”

Peter didn’t doubt it. It had taken Mr. Stark three months to escape Afghanistan, but that was in a cave with archaic tech while recovering from open-heart surgery. Peter had no such excuses. 

Mark continued without waiting for a response. “You don’t think I’ve noticed you trying to build a communications device? That’s your great plan? Contact Tony Stark and have him come save you?”

It wasn’t a terrible plan, but it was probably the least useful one to Mark that he could have come up with. Which was why Peter had chosen it. It did require some knowledge and skill though, which was why Peter wasn’t done with it yet.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m trying to hide what I’m doing,” Peter said, the sound of his own voice sounding strange after days of silence. “You never said how I had to escape.”

“I said you could try and escape, not get rescued,” Mark clarified, like it meant something. “And I told you to use caminium.”

“You never said that!” Implied it? Yes. Peter might even admit he had heavily implied it. But he hadn’t specifically said it was one of the rules. “You gave me a whole lab, and I’m using what I’m good at. Do you think you’ll get any useful inventions out of me if I have to work with unfamiliar materials and subjects? Do I look like a blacksmith to you?”

“Do I look like I care?” The snarl on Mark’s face gave the answer for him. “Quit it with these gooey, chemically messes you keep making. I’ve given you a forge and specs on an exciting new metal. Use those!”

“I’m not good at metals!” Peter protested. “I’m good at chemistry.”

“It’s off brand, kid.” Peter flinched at the nickname. He flinched even harder when Mark grabbed an actual branding iron that had been sitting next to the forge. He advanced on Peter, waving it menacingly. Something in the back of Peter’s mind realized this was the first time he’d actually seen Mark actually angry. He’d seemed so calm and collected in every other interaction. What was he capable of when he lost it? Hopefully not beating him with a branding iron. Or, you know, branding him with a branding iron. 

Mark’s eyes flitted to the forge beside them, and Peter’s stomach flip-flopped. But he stalked past it as Peter continued backing up. His rib shackled jerked him to an uncomfortable stop. He hadn’t been retracing his routes and the way it had tangled around tables throughout the day must have meant it had reached its limits. 

He stopped, unable to go any further as Mark loomed over him. “I’ve given you a forge, so you damn well better use it as more than a space heater. At least make it look like you’re trying to get out of here.”

“I am trying to escape! I’m doing the best I can!” Couldn’t Mark appreciate how hard it was to work in front of someone while trying to keep them completely in the dark?

No, probably not. Not when he was the one being kept in the dark. 

“Well it’s not good enough! I don’t know what the hell Stark has been teaching you, but it’s not enough!”

With a furious swing of his arm, Mark swept the branding iron over the table of chemicals Peter had been working with, shattering beakers, knocking over trays, and dumping a hot plate onto the floor between them. Peter jumped to the side when the mess spattered against his shoes. Mark with his thick blacksmith’s gloves and boots didn’t flinch. 

“Tell you what? I’ll add to the deal.” Mark wasn’t yelling anymore, but the shiver in his voice from barely concealed rage was just as terrifying. “Even though it’s not really your invention, if you make me a miniaturized arc reactor using my metal, I’ll let you go, no escape plan necessary.”

Peter didn’t really even know what that meant. What components of the arc reactor even used metal? Probably just the casing, right? Wasn’t that the least useful part? What was Mark hoping for? None of those answers actually mattered though because Mark was missing one very important point. 

“I don’t know how to make an arc reactor,” Peter said. “No one but Mr. Stark can.”

Mark threw the iron down on top of the swirling mess hissing on the floor and hissed at Peter himself, “Then what is the point of you?”

Peter didn’t have an answer to that. Not as far as Mark and his crazy forge were concerned. The point of him in his regular life was being a nephew and a friend. An inventor-in-training under Mr. Stark. A do-gooder vigilante in the streets of Queens. He had a point to existing out there.

But here, he was nothing. He had no point. Here, in the forge, he was just an object sitting around, waiting for someone to come find him and bring him home.

Peter had felt that the moment he’d woken up, but if Mark was starting to think that too…well, it wasn’t good. How would a kidnapper react when he found out that the target he’d spent so much time tracking and capturing and training had turned out to be utterly useless? If Peter wasn’t useful anymore, then Mark didn’t have a reason to keep him around. 

That was a terrifying thought. He doubted Mark was going to be nice enough to drop him back on Mr. Stark’s doorstep when he was done so he could report his kidnapper’s name and help him get arrested. If he didn’t find a way to be useful to Mark quick, he was toast. 

Mark took his silence as agreement. “No more trying to contact anyone. And no more playing with beakers.”

He knew he should keep his mouth shut, but Mark was reminding him of teachers who took points off assignments for not showing work when they hadn’t told you to before hand. First of all, what did it matter how you got the right answer as long as you did. And second, how can you be expected to read teacher’s minds about what steps they wanted you to write? 

“Then why did you put them in the lab?” 

The look of fury on Mark’s face and his wailing spider sense told Peter he’d gone too far. Mark’s gloved hands grabbed the spiked chain tethering Peter and pulled.

Peter’s hands instinctively came down and grabbed the chain to offset the pull, but the sharp spikes had them drawing back just as quickly. Mark reeled him in until Peter was standing in the pool of chemicals on the floor and had to lean back to avoid head butting his broad shoulders. He was pulled the chain up, painfully keeping Peter on his tiptoes. Please don’t break my ribs, please don’t break my ribs, he chanted in his mind. 

“As long as you’re using the metal and the forge I don’t care what else in here you use.” Mark’s breath didn’t smell like toothpaste this time. It smelled like the cocktail drinks at the gala. “I put them here because I overestimated your ability to read a lab and take direction from your superiors. Think you’ve learned that lesson yet?” He tugged and Peter yelped.

“Yes! Use the metal! Be on brand! Got it!” He was going to be here forever if he had to escape via blacksmithing. He’d end up as a caveman with shoulders the size of Mark’s from swinging at an anvil all day. 

“Good,” Mark dropped the chain and Peter took a step backward, trying and failing not to look too desperate. “Now clean this up and start again in the morning. And do it right.” 

Mark whirled around and stomped away. The sound of the door slamming and then the lock activating echoed around the lab ominously. A few deep breaths helped calm Peter’s rattled nerves a bit, but his spider sense still hummed at the jumble of chemicals on the floor. 

First things first, clean up this giant mess. Then figure out how he was going to become a blacksmith before Mark decided he was completely useless. 

The fumes wafting off the multi-colored puddle were already headache-inducing, so Peter’s first stop was the fume extractor hanging from the ceiling. He pulled it over to the table above the mess, clamping it to one of the table legs and flipping the switch that would start drawing the fumes away through the aluminum piping. Not perfect but better than nothing. His spider sense ratcheted down a notch. A small one. 

Even without Mark brandishing a branding iron in his face and telling him to stay away from the beakers, it was obvious he had no care for chemistry. No one with a basic appreciation of how dangerous chemicals could be would have been so destructive. He could have blown up the whole lab with that stunt.

Although Mark had to have at least a basic understanding of the dangers of lab work to have written the scientific papers that he did. So it probably wasn’t so much that he had no care for chemistry as it was he had no care for Peter. Because that was so much better. 

Peter wracked his brains. What had been on that table? Salicylic acid, ethyl acetate, and h-Leptane for sure. A few nitrates and oxidizers. Probably the peroxides he hadn’t cleaned up from yesterday. There had been a tray of supplies from one of the cabinets that Peter hadn’t inventoried yet, so he couldn’t be positive. Nothing water-reactive though, right? He was good to use water to clean this up?

Better not risk it. 

None of the supply cabinets offered any useful cleaning supplies other than trash bags and run-of-the-mill dish rags. No vermiculite or spill pillows. Not even a bag of cat litter, which was pretty good at absorbing messes. Even if he did have good materials, there would probably still be a mark burned into the floor. The mess still hissed quietly as white vapors raised off the surface. 

What a waste of good supplies. Was Mark going to replace them? Or was Peter really going to have to abandon all his chemistry plans and shift entirely to that stupid forge Mark insisted he use?

He dropped a few rags near a pink edge of the puddle. A few congealed parts showed where Mark had dragged Peter into the mess. Had his shoes reacted with the mixture somehow? Kneeling down to get a closer look, Peter noticed something even more interesting. 

The branding iron was burning. It wasn’t red-hot, didn’t even look warm, but dark bubbles of the outer layers of the metal bulged outward before splitting open and flaking off to the floor. The chemicals burned around the iron slowly, eating away layer after layer. Eureka!

Kind of. 

Excitement for a possible breakthrough warred with frustration that Mark’s rage and carelessness had been the thing that caused it. Shows what a great inventor he was that a psychopath and a lab accident got further than he did. 

Now if only he could remember what had been on the table. 

The caustic reaction seemed to be centered around the top of the branding iron where the puddle was a darker reddish color. It was the closest thing he’d found yet to his accident in chemistry class, but the reaction was still different. This one seemed slower acting, or was that just because there was less of the chemical coming in contact with the metal? And this reaction was corroding the metal while cold even though the reaction in chemistry class had been heated with a hot plate. 

At the thought of a hot plate, Peter’s spider sense pinged to the one Mark had knocked to the floor. Even though it had been turned off, he shouldn’t have just left anything electric on the floor, especially something still plugged in. It should have been the first thing he dealt with, maybe even before the fume extractor. 

The hot plate lay on its side a foot away from the iron, the cord redirecting the flow of the red chemicals leaking toward it. 

The red chemicals.

The red corrosive chemicals.

Peter could already see a section of the casing around the cord bubbling and flaking off like the metal had, only much faster. He reached for it, spider senses screaming now. He caught a glimpse of wire, a hint of a spark, and barely had time to retract his hand and lean backward before then the entire spill of toxic chemicals in front of him ignited. 

The force of the blast threw Peter across the room. A sharp pain in his lower ribs was forgotten when he slammed against the open forge against the wall. His right shoulder drove itself into the opening of the forge, stopped only by his elbow and head cracking against the walls on either side. The heat of the metal edge seared his wrenched neck muscles as he tumbled to the floor under the forge. 

He lay there on his stomach, stunned, the breath completely knocked out of him, feeling heat from the open forge pouring down over his body. His neck still burned, but it was quickly being overtaken by a growing fire in his shoulder. Like hot pokers. Like Mark had actually come back with a glowing branding iron and was holding against his entire shoulder, front and back. He couldn’t crane his neck enough to see it, but if he had to guess he wouldn’t be surprised to see blister or charred skin. Hell, the whole thing could be on fire. That would explain a lot actually.

But it wouldn’t explain the different kind of pain in his side. His shoulder was like fire, but his side was like ice, something cold and splintered and freezing him solid. His breath was starting to come back to him, but something still felt wrong. 

He rolled his head toward the door when it flew open and Mark’s footsteps thundered through, but his gaze landed on something much more horrifying a few yards away. The end of his rib shackles. The end that had been connected to two of his ribs not even a minute ago. Correction. The end that was still connected to two of his ribs, or at least to a few inches of them. Shattered like wishbones. 

Hey, at least he wasn’t restrained anymore. He was free to leave. Assuming he could actually stand. 

Mark knelt down and picked up the end of the chain, ignoring the boy burning up or bleeding out on the floor. Peter thought it was a toss-up whether burning or bleeding would be what actually killed him. “Better than I’d hoped,” he said in the muted voice of someone whose audience had hearing damage, examining the bits of bloody bone with an academic interest.

Peter wanted to say something clever. Something like “I’ve definitely earned more than a footnote in that patent now,” or “Think you can put those back in and easy as you took them out?” but his mouth wasn’t working right. His lungs weren’t working right either. Nothing was working right. 

Sprinklers sputtered to life above him, bringing back the freezing sensation. Water mixed with blood swirled on the floor in front of him. He could see it approaching his face, which had fallen back to the ground sometime when he wasn’t paying attention, but he was powerless to move out of its way. It didn’t matter anyway. Everything else was probably bloody, why not his face too? 

“You’ve got yourself in quite a pickle.”

Mark had turned his attention back to Peter. I’m not the one who threw chemicals all over the lab, Peter thought, but his mouth was still on strike. 

“The medical team should be here shortly. Hopefully they and your own healing powers can put you back together again. Well, most of you anyway. I don’t know if there’s ever been a successful rib reattachment. But I knew the risks when I signed you up for it,” Mark said. Like he was Peter’s guardian. Like he was making medical decisions in Peter’s best interest. 

The medical team arrived then in a flurry of shoes and the squeaking wheels of a gurney. Mark moved them back to allow them access. “You take care of him. I’ll get a real scientist to clean this mess up.”

Real scientist? He was fifteen. Was anybody a real anything by fifteen?

When they counted down and hefted him onto the gurney pain overwhelmed him, leaving him swirling into darkess, chased by Mark’s final words. 

“I think it’s time to make a call.”


	15. Ransom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m offering you the chance to pay the kid’s ransom. You seemed so eager to do it before when you thought it was mere money. Are your ideas worth so much more to you?"

Peter had been gone for almost two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow.

And Tony was still dead in the water.

He sat at a desk in his lab, fiddling with a functioning fly-sized drone of his own invention pinned under a magnifying glass. He’d thought that trying to copy the kidnapper’s tech might give him some insight into their resources and thought processes. Two days spent on this tiny piece of tech, but it still felt like nothing. Not that he’d expected much more.

The flight mechanism that made the bobbing motion from F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s recordings might have incriminated a researcher in Ukraine six years ago. World used to be you could track down a manufacturer or inventor with relative ease. But these days—thanks to globalization—inventions and innovation spread like wildfire. Give something shiny and new six months in the light of the world, and it could be found in nearly every country.

Which was why Tony played most of his tech—arc reactors and the Iron Man suits especially—close to his chest. You only showed people what you trusted them with. And Tony trusted the world as far as he could throw it. Which, despite being a superhero, wasn't very far.

The guys behind the face cloaking tech apparently felt the same way, which was why Tony had been unable to find so much as a whisper about them.

But Mr. Payliuk at the University of Kyev had no such quandaries with his compact propeller system. He’d let his creation spread all over the globe, into over a dozen commercial products and a handful of manufacturing catalogs. Which meant that, essentially, a drone made from mail-order parts had crashed his party and poisoned his intern. Way to add insult to injury.

Tony sealed the minuscule access panel, then unpinned the drone and tossed it into the air. The rotors caught the air and it started buzzing around the lab like a fly, following the programming Tony had added. The kid could probably web it out of the air on the first shot. Maybe Tony would make him a swarm of them for his next training session. Or let one loose in the lab and program it to bug him until he snapped the next time he stopped by. That would give Tony at least a month’s worth of spider jokes right there.

Reality knocked Tony’s heart back into the bottom of his stomach. Peter wasn’t here. Wouldn’t be waltzing through the doors for his next training session. Not unless Tony could find him. Not unless Tony could be better than he’d been the past two weeks.

Two weeks tomorrow.

How could anyone just disappear off the face of the earth for that long? And Peter Parker wasn’t just anyone. He was Spider-Man. Super-powered, super-sensed, super-sticky, and super-connected. He had the genius, billionaire, leader of the Avengers looking for him and he was still lost.

But then again, that connection was what had screwed him over in the first place. If Peter hadn’t been at Tony’s party, he wouldn’t have taken Tony’s poisoned drink. He’d saved Tony, but he’d almost died. Almost died so dramatically and curiously that the kidnappers had changed targets and discovered the kid’s secret identity.

Tony knew what the Stark name did to people. Had he somehow thought that Peter being young would protect him? As if he didn’t remember what the Stark name had done to him at fifteen? How could Tony have forgotten that ties to the Stark name—however distant—were as much a target as a tool?

Tony compulsively pulled up a holoscreen and checked for alerts from F.R.I.D.A.Y., unsurprised when there was nothing new. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had been tasked with scouring the web for anything and everything: scanning legitimate sites for missing or found persons, scanning the seedy illegal sites where missing persons often ended up, scanning for anything even remotely related to splicing together or tearing apart spider and human DNA. He’d even put alerts on any future doppleganger crimes, still hoping for a lead on that face cloaking tech.

But so far? Nothing. Dead in the water.

It was frustrating how badly technology had failed Tony. How badly Tony had failed Tony. People didn’t just outsmart Tony Stark. And it wasn’t every day he ran into a problem he couldn’t solve with a week of no sleep and all the caffeine.

Science had failed him. He’d resorted to consultations with dialect and body language experts to narrow down the suspects from the footage he had, and those were barely science. He’d gotten a few trite facts, but not near enough to create a full profile or a solid lead.

Dead in the water.

And he still had no idea what they wanted Peter for. Maybe they didn’t want him for anything anymore. Maybe he was already dead.

It wouldn’t be a bad bet based just on the facts: he was last seen desperately needing medical attention, the last contact with his captors indicated the same, then there was a whole lot of nothing. Nearly two weeks of nothing. Two weeks tomorrow. Enough nothing to suffocate a man. It was entirely possible they killed him accidentally or on purpose and weren’t contacting Tony because they thought they didn’t have any leverage left.

As if his body wasn’t leverage enough.

Tony shook the morbid thought from his head. He was still hoping. Trying to hope. Hoping and managing expectations. Hoping, managing expectations, and trying to pretend like he wasn’t still dead in the water. Like he had been for almost two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow.

Three days ago, he’d reached the uncomfortable point where he’d had to start paying attention to the other parts of his life that he’d let fall apart. Stark Industries things mostly. Things like sleep and a healthy diet if you asked Pepper. He’d already missed two very public events—one of which he was supposed to keynote—and Pepper was sure the recent dips in stock prices were due to his absences.

She’d spun some story about being him needing a break or being ill or something or other that the press hadn’t taken too kindly to. They hadn’t gotten wind of the kidnapped intern yet, thank God, but they didn’t seem to trust Pepper’s cover story.

The more accurate story would have been to claim a family emergency, but that would be hard to explain since he had no family except kind of Pepper, who was very visibly keeping SI afloat. And he couldn’t claim Avengers business without causing a media panic. So, eccentric, reclusive, unreliable billionaire it was, the confidence of stockholders be damned.

But he couldn’t stay in his lab forever. He couldn’t let his entire life and company fall apart while Peter was gone. Tony had started the race to find Peter at a dead sprint, only to find out he’d signed up for a marathon.

Which was a shame because Tony was a great sprinter. He excelled at single-handed focus. Pepper called it obsession, but Tony just called it effective. He’d always been an all-in sort of person. None of this work-life balance stuff. He was either working or living.

He wanted so badly to be all in for Peter, but he couldn’t do that indefinitely. And what if finding Peter took another two weeks? Two months? Two years? What if it took forever?

The first few days, a single-minded focus on Peter’s situation had felt like a lifeline. He’d cared about nothing else. He’d skipped meetings, meals, phone calls, sleeping, showering, civil conversation, the works. Looking for Peter had been the only thing he could cling to in order to stop from drowning in guilt.

But the fourth fight with Pepper and the third dip in stocks had showed him that devoting every second of his time and energy to looking for Peter was a lifeline he would strangle himself with if he hung on too long or too tightly.

Besides, the guilt had frozen now, so he was no longer drowning. It had crystallized into something sharp and static that let him breathe but never stopped stabbing at him. His guilt no longer drove him frantically to burn himself out, but he knew it would melt slowly, tainting things long after this was all done, however things turned out.

He’d started to think of this as a Schrödinger's spider situation. Peter was trapped in a box with completely unpredictable people controlling the situation. They may as well be the random subatomic events from Schrödinger's original thought experiment for all Tony could understand them.

As far as Tony was concerned, Peter was both alive and dead right now. And he was trying to organize his life believing both. Put every second he could spare into finding the kid. Keep the rest of his life functioning on more than life support so he’d have something to go back to once he did find Peter. Or if he never found him.

Naive optimism was a little hard to come by after two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow.

And still dead in the water.

Tony’s ringing phone interrupted his thoughts, and he sighed deeply before standing.

That’d be May calling for her nightly update. It felt like half of Tony’s days were spent giving people reports on his daily failures to make an inch of progress. May called first thing every morning. Pepper usually called around lunch. Happy always brought over dinner to eat with Tony in the lab, and Rhodey always texted when he got off work. Then May called again in the evening. Although, Happy hadn’t been around with dinner yet, so she was ahead of schedule.

Tony searched the lab for his real phone. Having F.R.I.D.A.Y. answer over the lab system would pick up too much ambient noise, and May didn’t like it. And that way, they could both pretend that Tony wasn’t hiding out in the lab and was actually taking care of himself.

At F.R.I.D.A.Y.S’s prompting, Tony found and pulled the phone out of a toolbox it had fallen into, freezing when he saw the screen.

Unlisted number. Not May’s.

Video call, not audio.

This had to be something, right? Something to do with Peter? He wasn’t just being paranoid?

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., record this call and try and trace it.”

Tony declined the camera, opting to show only a black screen to match the caller’s black screen showing on his phone, then answered.

“Hello?”

No answer. Maybe someone breathing?

“Hello? Is anyone there? Congratulations, you’ve just pocket-called the one and only Tony Stark, please hang up and don’t ever try again.”

A voice came through the line. A voice without an ounce of fear. Or anger. Or any emotion besides pure confidence. A voice that had Tony reaching instinctively for his gauntlet watch to make sure it was still there.

“You show me your face, and I’ll show you his.”

It hit Tony like a punch to the gut. Speechless, he flipped to the phone’s options and revealed his face. It stared back at him, trapped in a tiny box in the corner of the screen, but he could still see dark circles under his eyes and a deep frown. He flattened out the frown to a neutral expression, although the caller had already seen it. The mask was already cracked.

Before he could piece it back together anymore or crack an inappropriate joke, the caller’s video sprang to life. There was no unfamiliar face to match to the voice. Instead the video showed a room with a bed bearing a small figure he hadn’t seen for almost two weeks.

Two weeks tomorrow.

He tried to keep his face neutral when all it wanted to do was melt to the floor at the sight.

Peter was laying flat, the blankets pulled up to his chest, his arms laying atop the patterned covers. Red swathes of burnt skin spread across one shoulder and arm, punctuated by blisters and charred flesh that were a stark contrast to his usual paleness. The burns reached up his neck with angry fingers, but his face was spared the worst of the red. Instead it was mottled with dark bruises, a matted section of hair hinting at a recently bleeding head wound.

Peter’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping peacefully. His face flinched, contorting subtly every few seconds in a new expression of pain. The rest of his body followed suit. His shoulders flexed one way, then the other, like he was weakly trying to roll over, making Tony worry something was wrong with his back. His lower back looked like it couldn’t stand to be touching the bed as it kept arching off it.

His hands made weak fists or clutched at the blankets around him, tearing the fabric. His legs drew up toward is body, tenting the blanket around him, then slid back down. He was constant motion, but none of it fluid. It was a motion of searching, a desperate quest to find a moment’s peace.

An empty IV stand in the corner was the final blow of horror, and Tony winced at the reminder of what he’d contributed to the situation. And apparently was no longer contributing. Had they run out of the painkillers he’d sent? How long had Peter been like this?

A small part of Tony was thrilled that Schrödinger's spider was in fact alive, but the larger part was horrified at the state he was in. What had happened? What had they done to him? Tony tamped down the rage that had built up inside him. Play things close to the chest. Be PR and sunglasses Tony.

“Now that I’ve got your attention,” the faceless voice said, “let’s get down to business.”

He had his attention all right. The kind of attention that Iron Man paid to enemies in battle. Not exactly the sort of attention most people craved. There was a first for everything though.

“That’s more a gross violation of human rights than a matter of business,” Tony said casually. “But go ahead. I can’t wait to see how you spin this one.”

He could see F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s attempts to trace the call out of the corner of his eye. It looked like she was having trouble.

“No spinning,” the voice said. “I’m just here to talk.”

“Yeah, I don’t do the whole anonymity thing with people I’m talking to. How about a name? Or even better, how about a face?”

He didn’t think he’d get either, but he had to try. He’d been surprised in the past how forthcoming villains could be when gloating.

“Oh, you mean this face?”

The camera flipped, and Tony saw double. His own tired face in the tiny box from his phone’s camera. His own excited face with a devious smile in the large box from the caller’s phone.

He was wearing Tony’s face.

This face cloaking tech was getting out of hand. He needed to track that stuff down yesterday. It was far too dangerous to have out in the world. And too…disconcerting.

“Surprised?” Faceless asked.

Tony wanted to yell and swear, but more than that he wanted to appear unaffected.

“Flattered, actually. I mean, you don’t quite have the cheekbones to pull it off, but I can see the similarities.”

What was he even talking about? He couldn’t tell a thing about the man’s cheekbones. He forced himself to look away from the phone across the lab for a few seconds to break the illusion that he was almost hypnotized by seeing two of him on the screen.

“Now, back to the face I promised to show you.”

The camera flipped back to Peter again, and Tony was both grateful to avoid looking into his own evil eyes and to be observing Peter’s condition again. Nothing seemed to have changed.

“What do you want?” Tony wasn’t sure if he was being too abrupt. Maybe he should have taken a hostage negotiation class in the past two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow.

“Like I said, just here to talk.”

Sure. Because most people started conversations by threatening minors and assuming the faces of the person they were talking to.

“Well, how about you start talking about what the hell you did to him?”

Not very subtle, but it got the point across.

“I’ve done nothing that you can see,” he said. “This was the result of an unfortunate lab accident.”

“We talking Labrador lab accident? Old Yeller style? I didn’t realize they were that vicious. Or could cause third degree burns.” Tony rambled, trying to keep his voice steady as he processed what the man had said and what it could mean. “You must be into some crazy genetic programming. You might run into a marketing problem though. It’s gonna be hard to sell people household pets that catch fire.”

“A scientific lab accident,” the voice answered, sounding mildly amused at Tony’s attempt to deflect with humor, “but I’ll add flaming dogs to our research brainstorming list.”

Tony had been in many a lab and had yet to see an accident of that magnitude. Not if anyone of moderate competence was around. Sure, Peter was young, but he wasn’t an idiot. There was more to the story.

“What was he doing? Making a volcano?”

“I don’t know. I gave him free reign of the place, so who knows what he was cooking up?”

What? Peter was working in a lab? For this maniac? How had that happened? And if that was the case, why hadn’t Peter just left or blown something up and escaped or sent out a distress beacon or something? There had to be more to it. Although maybe that’s where the injuries came from. Maybe Peter had actually tried to blow something up.

Tony voiced none of that, opting for humor again. “You do know that poaching interns is bad business practice, right? You’ll get a reputation.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

This weirdo really was one for creepy one-liners followed by expectant pauses.

“Well, it’s your career down the drain. Don’t bother calling Stark Industries in your future job searches.”

“I’m not looking for a job,” Faceless said. “I’ve called to offer you a deal.”

Perfect. Now the negotiations could begin. Time to remind Faceless exactly who he was dealing with.

“Well, I’ve already got a counter-offer prepared. Here’s my deal. You bring him back and turn yourself in, and I won’t burn your whole operation to the ground with everyone in it when I find you.”

“Tsk, tsk, what would Peter say to such violence?” Peter coughed weakly in the background. “He seems to think that no one deserves death, not even the likes of you or I.”

This guy talking like he knew Peter raised Tony’s blood pressure a few notches, but he channeled it into picking up a screwdriver and spinning it in a hand out of the camera’s view.

“Yeah, I don’t appreciate being grouped with you. No peas in a pod. No birds of a feather. No friendship bracelets around a campfire. And I don’t particularly care what Peter has said he thinks of you while you’re holding him captive and nurturing some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ll believe he doesn’t want you dead when I talk to him myself.”

“That can be arranged.”

Not if Peter was in the state he was in right now. He needed help.

But Tony smiled and said, “Great. Perfect. Call my secretary with a time and you can bring him on over for an appointment. The Tower’s always open, although I am willing to make an exception and meet you at your local police station.”

“I had a different deal in mind.”

Of course he did. The screwdriver in Tony's hand spun faster.

A weak groan interrupted the conversation as Peter cast his head to face the camera more. Still wearing that God-awful morphing expression of pain. Eyes still closed. He probably didn’t even know where he was right now.

“Just relax, kid,” Tony said without thinking. “Hang in there.”

The voice chuckled. “Touching, but we’ve overstayed our welcome. Peter needs his rest.”

“He needs a lot of things, none of which you seem willing to provide.” Tony hated every movement of the camera as it turned away from the bed, skimming over some grisly chains hanging on the wall before dropping to the floor.

“One does one’s best.”

“If this if your best, I definitely don’t want to see your worst.”

“You really don’t.”

The camera was moving again, the man stepping into a brightly lit lab and giving Tony a quick tour. There was a large burn on the floor, so maybe Faceless hadn’t been lying about the lab accident. He could still be lying about everything else though. Like exactly what Peter’s involvement had been.

But the next scan showed a notebook with Peter’s signature scrawling inside it. Next to the notebook, spread out haphazardly, were a collection of arc reactor and Iron Man designs and specs. The scan was too fast and the pages too far away for him to check for accuracy, but the mere images on the page made his grip tighten on the phone and the screwdriver in his other hand spin faster.

Were they forcing Peter to recreate Tony’s tech? Could he even do that? Did he know how dangerous that was if he succeeded?

“I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that you were the original target that night at the gala,” Faceless said. “But the poor boy just had to spill his drink and ruin our carefully crafted plan. So we’ve had to improvise.”

“I’m aware,” Tony said. “I’ve been watching from the sidelines. I’ve got a few pointers on showmanship if you’re interested.”

“Oh, you’ve got a lot of pointers I’d be interested in. This lab was meant for you, you know, so I’d love to know what you think of it.”

The camera scanned the lab again, and Tony rolled his eyes.

“A little dark. Not enough room for larger mechanical projects. Coffee machine’s archaic. Maybe a 6 out of 10 as it stands.”

Probably an 8 out of 10 if he was being honest, not that he was about to say that.

“But you don’t know the context yet,” Faceless said, scanning the lab again, including the door that led into Peter’s dark room. “This lab was meant to give you a second chance at rebirth. A second Afghanistan if you will. The push you need to reinvent yourself once more.”

0 out of 10 then.

At the mere mention of the country’s name, Tony’s heart sped up and his hands faltered. The screwdriver he'd been spinning betrayed him by shooting across the floor loudly. One Afghanistan had almost killed him. What did he ever do to deserve a copycat villain threatening him with a second one? Okay, he knew what he’d done, but still, a guy could hope, right?

Tony swallowed, his empty fingers now beating a rapid nervous pattern against his thigh. “You know, I think I like how the first reinvention went. Nearly ten years and I haven’t been able to think of anything cooler than flying around the world in an Iron Man suit.” Hopefully Faceless wouldn’t notice the anxious quiver in his voice he was barely keeping under control.

“That’s because you lack motivation. And imagination. There’s more to you than this, Stark. More than the hopeless penitent trying to make up for past sins.”

He was lacking a whole lot more than motivation and imagination. A certain spider-kid in his lab for starters. And patience with this conversation.

“Not that I don’t love shooting the breeze with faceless villains who talk in riddles and pretend to know me, but let’s get to the point,” Tony said more firmly. “There’s only one thing we have in common, and that’s the kid you’ve beaten to hell and back. So what ransom are you looking for so I can get him back?”

“We’ve got a lot in common,” Faceless said, eternally calm. “We have to maintain different images—I understand that—but we can help each other.”

“Hard pass. I just want the kid back and your actual face in prison.”

“Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous,” the voice said, not sounding contrite at all, “but it seems that I’ve got a bit of a captive audience here. I’m sure you’ve tried tracing the call and found the dozens of countries I’ve run it through.” Tony checked F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s progress again, disappointed to see that Faceless was right. “Besides, I don’t need a ransom from you. I’ve given Peter the option of offering his own ransom.”

Didn’t need a ransom? What the hell was this whole conversation for then? Why call Tony if he didn’t want something from him? And how was Peter supposed to get his own ransom together?

“You’ve probably noticed, but the kid doesn’t have much,” Tony said.

“He’s got a sharp mind, and I’ve given him every means of escape he should need in the lab. All he needs to do is use it.”

Even with this guy explaining his ridiculous plan face to face—well, face to voice—it still made no sense.

“You kidnapped him to help him escape?”

“I’m doing intentionally what your captors did by accident in Afghanistan.” There was that word again. His heart rate noted it by picking up twenty beats a minute. “They provided you a means to escape, but were too stupid to profit from your inventions. Had they been better, they’d have both the arc reactor and Iron Man technologies at their fingertips.”

So the guy just wanted to steal technology from people smarter than him. That made a little sense.

“Rudimentary versions though," Tony pointed out. "They wouldn’t have the finished products.”

“Rudimentary is all I need.”

An arrogant thief then.

“I only expected to keep you here a week before you managed to create something worthy of escape, but the kid’s been here almost twice that long with nothing to show for it.”

Two weeks tomorrow, Tony’s brain supplied. Too long. Too long for any kidnapping, but especially for one that was modeling itself after his own capture in Afghanistan. What else was the same? Not the shrapnel. Not the surgeries. Not the electromagnet, surely?

Although he hadn’t see Peter’s chest under the blanket, so he couldn’t be sure. This guy was certifiably crazy, so who knew what he’d done.

A pain in his chest flared at the thought and he rubbed at it, turning the camera to face the floor momentarily so he could collect himself.

It couldn’t be an electromagnet. He’d have seen a battery or power source or something nearby. It couldn’t be that.

But being forced to work a lab? Yep. Water boarding and torture? Definite possibility.

Nearly dead in the water.

A flashback to a freezing bucket of ice water in a dark room had Tony gasping for air as he dropped his phone on the table face down. He just needed a minute. Just to catch his breath. He hadn’t expected this guy to get under his skin so easily.

“I expected more of him,” the voice rang louder where it bounced off the surface of the table. Or maybe that was just Tony's hearing going in and out. “He’s no Tony Stark, that’s for sure.”

“Well, he is fifteen,” Tony’s voice was barely over a whisper. Why was he still trying to keep up the snarky charade? “Better than I was at fifteen.” Maybe not smarter, but definitely better in all the other ways that counted.

“If you were to step in, I doubt it would take you more than a week.”

The pause in the conversation allowed Tony to catch his breath a little, but he picked up the phone when he realized the implication, impending panic attack or no.

“Wait, are you offering some sort of messed-up trade? You’ll let him go if I take his place in the lab?”

Just saying the words out loud made his head whirl. He reached behind himself with one hand for a chair to sit in as casually as he could manage.

“Of course not. But I’m inviting you to join him.”

Okay, Faceless had stopped making sense again. How was this even a deal? This was asking for surrender.

“Excuse me? What kind of a deal is that?”

“I’m offering you the chance to pay the kid’s ransom. You seemed so eager to do it before when you thought it was mere money. Are your ideas worth so much more to you? Come in, invent a way to escape, and you’re both free to go. The price of both your freedom is one worthy invention.”

“You think I’m just going to let you kidnap me?”

“I’m giving you the option,” Faceless said, sounding infuriatingly calm at the idea of Tony rejecting his offer. “Or you can leave Spider-Man here in his own Afghanistan with me. I’m sure he’ll escape on his own eventually, reinvented. Reforged. With or without you. Maybe it’s fitting that the new generation of heroes gets their first serving of crucible before the older ones go back for seconds. And if he ultimately fails to escape, I know a number of biologists who would happily take over the reinventing for me. Maybe he’s more useful to the world as a spider than a man.”

The phone clattered to the floor as F.R.I.D.A.Y. sounded some warning or other about his blood pressure or heart rate in the background. He silenced her with a motion.

Faceless knew Peter was Spider-Man. Which Tony had basically guessed, but now he knew it for sure. And he knew that he was willing to sell Peter to the highest bidder as a science experiment, which would lead to an entirely different brand of lab, one much worse than the one Faceless was standing in. One with much worse accidents.

And all that beside the fact that Peter didn’t need an Afghanistan. Tony had used it to reverse his course, to take stock of his life, to create Iron Man. But Peter was already on the right course, was already a good person, was already Spider-Man. He didn’t need any of this. Peter didn’t need to be reforged.

“I see you’re considering my offer. Good.” Faceless couldn’t see anything but the ceiling above where the phone had been dropped, but Tony knew that was enough. The mask was shattered. Faceless knew he had him on the ropes. “The offer won’t be on the table for much longer. I’ll be sending an address to your phone in the next few minutes. You’ll have twenty minutes to get to the rooftop of that building. There you will find a remotely piloted helicopter that will bring you where you need to be. Sensors on board will detect any suits or tech or threats. If they find anything, the helicopter will return to the rooftop and self-destruct.”

Just like the painkiller drone. The one he and Helen had debated over. But there was no time for debates now. No one else to bounce ideas off of. No time.

Tony wanted to threaten him again. Remind him exactly who he was dealing with and how badly this was going to end for him when they finally escaped. But he couldn’t find the words. He could barely breathe from his spot on the floor. When had he ended up on the floor? He couldn’t even find the energy to stand and grab the phone.

He was dead in the water.

But now he had the option to dive to the depths and join Peter in the belly of the beast. Was that any better?

“You have twenty minutes,” the voice restated. “No suits, no tech, no friends. You should be able to make it if you run. Fast.”

The beep signaling the end of the call made Tony jump.

“Fri,” he whispered, “did you get anything?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I recorded the entire call but was unable to track the signal.”

Dead in the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! I think this is my longest chapter yet!


	16. Winded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He hated that he was even considering it. Some psycho was inviting him for Afghanistan 2.0, the rematch of the century, and Tony was actually thinking about it? Even a little? 
> 
> Was he really that confident in his ability to invent something miraculous again? In his ability to pull one over on his captors?
> 
> Maybe.

The oppressive emptiness of the lab after F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s failure to track the kidnapper’s video call bore down on Tony like the weight of the sea, like the weight of the stars. He couldn’t have stood up if he’d wanted to. Couldn’t take a full breath to save his life. 

But it wasn’t his life he had the chance to save. 

He needed someone here to talk to him, to set his mind straight, but the lab offered no one. No Pepper to calm him down. No Helen to plan with. No Rhodey to make sure he wasn’t going to do something stupid. 

He wasn’t going to do anything stupid, right?

I mean, stupid was relative anyway, and this whole situation had enough stupid in it to make anything Tony did look Nobel worthy in comparison. Even giving himself up to a self-proclaimed kidnapper.

He hated that he was even considering it. Some psycho was inviting him for Afghanistan 2.0, the rematch of the century, and Tony was actually thinking about it? Even a little? 

Was he really that confident in his ability to invent something miraculous again? In his ability to pull one over on his captors?

Maybe. Last time he’d only had a dark cave with near prehistoric technology and unsuspecting captors who thought they’d had him over a barrel.This time his captor would be expecting something, but he’d have a state-of-the-art-ish lab to be working with. And a brilliant partner helping him out.

But he’d had one of those last time too. Something inside his chest twisted at the memory. 

“Don’t waste your life, Stark.”

Yinsen had been clever and helpful, and his self-sacrificing streak had gotten him shot. Tony had seen the same thing in Peter the day he’d almost torn himself apart trying to hold an entire ferry together. 

He’d be damned if that sacrifice was going to be made for Tony twice. He didn’t deserve it. 

Peter did though. 

The thought surprised Tony, who was suddenly able to see Yinsen’s sacrifice in a new light. Huh. So that’s why he’d done it. 

But Yinsen had had no family to return to after captivity. Tony did. Sacrifice would be a last resort then. 

He could almost hear the voices of Pepper, Rhodey, and Happy in the back of his mind, trying to persuade him otherwise, trying to convince him there was another way, trying to tell him this lifeline was suspiciously shaped like a noose. 

But Tony could barely hear them over the cacophony of his own mind roaring to life. He didn’t have time to mope. Or to second-guess. He was on the clock. He had a job to do. Time to think.

What tools did he have? Well, the biggest aces up his sleeve—quite literally—were his subcutaneous trackers. F.R.I.D.A.Y. could use them to track him anywhere in the world, which technically broke the “no tech” rule Faceless had made, which meant they might set off the helicopter’s sensors and ruin Tony’s whole plan to turn himself in. 

But it wasn’t like he could carve them out of his arms while running through the streets of New York to whatever address he was going to be given. He was liable to accidentally kill himself. And even if he didn’t, the paparazzi photos and CCTV footage of it Pepper was bound to dig up looking for him would give her a heart attack. 

The sharp ding of his phone receiving a text made him flinch but gave him the energy to drag himself up a table to his feet and grab his phone. 

The address. The one that would take him to the kid. It was further than Tony had run in years, but he was sure he could make it. Mostly.

Every instinct was screaming at him to start running, but Tony forced himself to take one good breath and finish thinking. What other tools did he have? What had the video changed?

First, he had a one-way ticket to wherever Peter was being held that was loaded up with a self-destruct bomb in case its sensors detected a threat. But somewhere in that machine were the coordinates to Peter. And it was just a machine. Machines, Tony could work with.

Second, he had a clear, usable voice sample for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to run against anything she could find for voice recognition. He had information about all the lab equipment he’d been shown. He had the page of Peter’s notes he’d seen. He had the weird forge in the corner that the kidnapper had paused too long on and stood out as weird fare for a lab. He had a few straws to grasp to figure out Faceless’s identity and where he was keeping Peter on his own. 

But he had no time. 

No time because the twenty minutes were counting down and because, third, he had an idea of the awful state Peter was in. It had looked bad. And the kidnappers either wouldn’t or couldn’t do much to help. The kid needed someone in his corner. Tony could either sit here knocking a few straws together or go to Peter, to what sounded like a full lab, and help him escape. And make sure he didn’t die before they could. 

That was better on all accounts, right? Well, except for Tony’s account, but God only knew that account was long overdrawn. He’d been dodging death like a thief since Afghanistan. Since New York. Since Sokovia. 

F.R.I.D.A.Y. could sort through straws without him. He had somewhere to be. And fast. 

One minute since the text. Nineteen to go. 

Tony pocketed the first flathead screwdriver he could find and sprinted out of the lab, panic forgotten. For now. Nothing like a ticking clock to help you shove your emotional problems onto another day. He had something he needed to get before he left the building. Tony called out instructions to F.R.I.D.A.Y. as he ran to the Medbay. 

“Fri, run everything you can on that video recording to identify the speaker or location. The voice, the construction of the building, ambient noises, Peter’s notes, the lab equipment, everything we’ve got. Send anything you find to Rhodey.” Man, Rhodey was going to be so pissed. Pepper even more so. 

He skidded so hard turning into the Medbay that he had to grab the door frame to stay upright. Flinging open drawers so hard they bounced closed again, rifling through cabinets, and cursing labeling systems, Tony ended up with a bottle of Peter’s tier three painkillers, a pack of empty syringes, and a roll of bandages with some tape. 

He hadn’t been able to find the burn cream, but there was no time to ask anyone or look again. He wished he had time to put together an actual medical kit to help Peter. Hell, he wished he had time to go to medical school and become a doctor or nurse so he’d actually know what to do with said med kit. But even one of the smartest men in the world couldn’t whip through medical school on a twenty minute run through New York. This was the best he could do. Pathetic.

Slipping the items into his pocket, he started running to the garage exit, finishing his orders to F.R.I.D.A.Y.

“Transfer full mainframe access to Pepper and Rhodey in an hour, but tell them not to get used to it. I’m coming back. Soon. Definitely quicker than three months this time, so don’t you dare let Pepper start job hunting.” He wanted to tell her sorry, but that felt too final. He’d apologize when he got back.

“And hide the address they sent me until I get a good head start. Let’s give it an hour. Hide my subcutaneous implant signal until then too. If they show up early, they’ll screw everything up.” Their voices were in the back of his mind again, yelling that this was most definitely a trap, but he ignored them. It was also an opportunity.

Turning a corner brought Tony face to chest with an imposing figure. He bounced off their broad torso and banged against the wall, barely keeping his feet. 

Happy looked at him with raised eyebrows, not the least bit ruffled, hands full of plastic bags carrying takeout.

“Screw what up?” he said, giving Tony the incredibly obvious body scan he did every time they met to make sure he was okay. Head of security, he was; subtle, he was not. 

“Nothing.” Tony tried to sidle past him, but Happy blocked the way.

“Nothing nothing. You look like you’re in the middle of a 100-yard dash. Did something happen with the kid? It’s the kid, isn’t it?”

And the bloodhound had latched onto the scent. Great. He wasn’t getting away from Happy now without a serious red herring. Time to throw him off the scent. He’d apologize later, add it to the massive list of apologies he was going to have to make when this was all over. 

“Yeah, it’s the kid, Hap. I don’t have time to explain, I’ve got to—” He paused for a second, feigning a sudden realization. “Actually, you can help! Get a car and meet me at LaGuardia as fast as you can. Park and find me inside Terminal B. I’ll meet you there. I’ve got something to do first.”

Happy’s eyes widened. “He’s at the airport?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Tony lied. Why hadn’t Happy run off yet? His watch said seven whole minutes had already passed. Only thirteen left. “We’ll find out when we get there, okay, Hap? Now scram!”

“Got it, Terminal B.” Happy turned to go, then looked down sharply at the bags in his hands. He offered one to Tony hesitantly, “Um, do you want some dinner for the road?”

“What? No! We don’t have time.” Tony was about ready to try bulldozering right through him, physics and body masses be damned.

“Right, I’ll meet you there.”

Happy spun around, the plastic bags flying wide in his hands, and ran for the garage, 100% dedicated to the wild goose chase Tony had just sent him on. Tony took off in the opposite direction, toward an exit that would let him out onto the street. 

It would take Happy at least half an hour to get to the airport, probably that long again to park and navigate the zoo that was Terminal B on a good day. Then a half hour to get back, not counting whatever time Happy wasted sitting around looking for Tony or Peter. In an hour, he’d still be at the airport, Tony would be long gone, and Pepper or Rhodey would be giving Happy a call to fill him in on what was really going on. Equal chance they’d be calling to ask him what the hell was going on actually. Tony was leaving a confusing mess in his wake. 

Once they got over being confused, they were all going to be furious. Happy especially would be pissed that he’d been shaken off so easily, but he’d be too late to stop Tony, and that was what mattered. 

The push bar doors to the outside opened so slowly that Tony ricocheted off them as he tried to run through, spinning onto the sidewalk before pausing to find his bearings. The air outside was turning chilly, the sky around him verging on dusk. He’d been in the timeless, weatherless vacuum of his lab for so long he was legitimately surprised to see the world turning so simply around him.

He took off in the direction of the address at a dead sprint. He got a few odd looks from the stragglers still on the street in the business part of town, but he ignored them hoping they’d do the same to him. He hadn’t stopped to grab a coat, hadn’t even stopped to grab a baseball cap or sunglasses. He’d just have to pray that no one here would be fast enough to snap a photo or video of him running away from the tower like a spooked bomb disposal technician. Or at least that they wouldn’t post them until after he was up and away. Actually, he hoped nothing got taken at all. He didn’t need this paparazzi shot to be the last Pepper saw of him before he abandoned her.

He pulled out his phone while running, breathlessly instructing F.R.I.D.A.Y. to send Helen the sections of the video involving Peter but to leave out the sound. He needed a consultation, but he couldn’t afford to give up his whole plan. Helen would turn him in as fast as Happy would. 

Once he saw the video was sent, he typed in her number himself and listened to the ringing. For the love of all that is holy that he had no right to call on, please don’t let her be in the middle of a twelve-hour surgery that’s impossible to interru—

“Tony?”

Oh, thank God.

“Helen, did you get…the video I sent?” He probably sounded a few seconds away from a panic attack with how hard he was breathing.

“Yes, I’m watching it now. Just a minute.” The pause felt like an eternity before Helen came back with a whispered, “What the hell?”

“Yeah, I know,” Tony gasped. “What can you tell me…about his condition based…on this video?”

“Hmmm…” Another drawn-out pause. The silence was killing him. “Facial bruising could indicate a mild or moderate concussion, but I’d need to see him in person to say for sure.”

Okay, concussions weren’t too bad.

“The burns look like a mix of first to third degree burns and aren’t being treated appropriately, but his healing factor should be enough to handle it. They’re maybe a day old. They look too random to be a torture technique, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m guessing they’re from some sort of explosion. The bruises on the face could be from the explosion or from a traditional beating. Whether that explosion was intentional or not is anyone’s guess though.”

Tony was really wishing he’d found a tube of burn cream. He should have thought to call Helen from the Medbay, but it was too late now. He checked his watch. Nine minutes left.

“But if the bruises on his face were sustained at the same time as the burns, the fact that they haven’t healed yet is concerning.” 

She actually sounded concerned, which meant Tony was about five stages past concerned now. 

“His face is thinner than before,” Helen continued, “so he’s at least a little malnourished. That’s likely to slow his healing factor, as it would with a non-enhanced rate of healing. And obviously he’s in considerable pain. They’ve either run out of the painkillers we sent or they’re withholding them to make the video more effective.”

So they were either sadistic or out of their depth. Tony was glad he’d thought to grab the painkillers. Finally something useful he’d be able to do.

A car honked at Tony as he ran across a street without waiting for a signal. He flinched, but kept running.

Helen sounded perplexed when her voice came over the phone again. “But the pain doesn’t seem to be centered around his arms. I’d guess that there’s a larger wound on his abdomen or back that the blanket is covering.

Make that eight levels past concerned. It felt like he was about to have a heart attack, but that might just be all the running he was doing.

“Is anything life threatening?” Tony asked.

“Not imminently. But with a slowed healing rate, if those burns aren’t bandaged and they get infected, it’s a less sure bet. They seem unable or unwilling to offer proper treatment. And that’s not even considering what might be going on that we can’t see.”

“Okay, tell me…how to treat him.” They were down to seven minutes now. 

“If you’re treating him now, then I need to be there. I can be at the Tower in fifteen minutes.”

“No, I’m not…treating him now,” Tony said between rapid breaths. 

“So you’re calling me, but you’re not calling me in?”

“Sure. Just your average…phone consultation…I still don’t know…where he is…but I need to know…how to help…Just in case.”

“I am your just in case, Tony,” Helen said firmly. “You call me in the moment you know something.”

“I will,” Tony lied, mentally adding Helen to the list of people he was going to have to apologize to when he returned. “But how about a…second just in case…One for the road…What if you’re unavailable?” He was walking a fine line here. He needed to know how to help, but he couldn’t let her know what he was doing. She’d try and stop him.

“Then call in my team,” she said, making it sound like the obvious answer. Which it was.

“Okay, but what if…I’m the only one available?”

“What won’t happen, Tony. You’ve got to calm down. You’re breathing too hard. You’re going to have another panic attack.”

Yeah, because he was running across Manhattan hard enough to give himself a heart attack. 

“But what if it does happen?” Tony nearly yelled. “Just tell me what to do!”

“Call the professionals. Any professional.” Her clinical calmness was driving Tony insane. “Do you need me to remind you how useless you were at the gala when he was poisoned? Leave the medicine to the medical personnel.”

She didn’t think Tony knew that? He still had nightmares about Peter getting his throat cut open and Tony holding his head down helplessly. Tony was barely better than a band-aid and a sleeping pill as far as medical treatment went, but that was more than Peter had right now. He knew he wasn’t enough. He knew this wasn’t ideal. He knew this was so far from ideal that one of his long-range missiles couldn’t even touch it. But he was all Peter had.

“Damn it, just tell me!” Tony yelled, the effect somewhat lessened by him gasping for breath. “There’s no one else…but me…and I need to know…how to help him…the best I can!”

Silence. Had he given himself away?

“I don’t know what you’re planning, Tony,” Helen’s voice was definitely suspicious now, “but it’s a bad idea. If you’re close enough to Peter to treat him, you need to be calling for help.”

Silence. This time from Tony.

“Tony, what did they say? What were their demands? What in God’s name is going on? Are you running somewhere?”

Busted. “I can’t say, Helen…but I have a plan…Mostly a plan…It dreams of being a plan…when it grows up…But it’s all I’ve got.”

“Do Rhodey and Pepper know?”

“They will soon.” 

Soon enough, but too late to matter. 

“Listen, whatever you’re doing is obviously rash and foolish. Give it time, and we’ll all figure something out together.”

She sounded like she was trying to talk him off a ledge. Hell, maybe she was. But Tony couldn’t come up with a new plan now. He had six minute left. Barely enough time for the first one.

“There’s no time,” he said. “And I’m not…changing my mind…Are you going to help…or not?”

She gave a sigh long enough Tony was worried the phone had started making static. He checked the connection, putting the phone back to his ear just in time to hear her reply.

“There’s not much I can do with so little information. The biggest threats to him will be malnutrition, possibly dehydration, and infection from open wounds. All open wounds need to be bandaged with anti-bacterial cream and those bandages changed at least once a day. If there is something bigger like I suspected, make sure the stitches are well done and straight. You’ve seen what good stitches look like?”

“I’ve had enough to know,” Tony said. “And how much of his tier three painkillers can I give him at once?”

“Basic pain control would be 1 ml every four hours. Bump it up to 1.5 ml for serious pain. 3-4 ml at once should induce unconsciousness to varying degrees. Under no circumstances give more than 4 at a time or more than 10 cumulatively in a 24-hour period. Overdose risk signs to watch for are breathing difficulty and blue-tinged lips or fingernails. And Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Take care of yourself too.”

It was the breathing hard from running that was making it hard to answer, not the sudden sudden regret stuck in his throat. 

“Always do,” he choked out.

“Not based on the number of times you’ve been in my Medbay,” she joked. “Or based on whatever half-baked plan you’ve got going.”

“Technically it’s my Medbay…I just allow you…the honor of working there…because your stitches are so straight.”

“You make them sound like an embroidery project at a finishing school.”

“No way…yours are prettier.”

Another silence as Tony panted. Not long now. Not long before he cut himself off from the world he’d built around himself to try and save a piece of it. 

“Tell Pepper I’m sorry, Helen…I really am.” He’d never be able to hold his resolve through an actual call with Pepper, but she deserved to have something from him. “If I had more time…if I were smarter…maybe I could think of something else…but this is all I’ve got…I’m sorry.”

He hung up the phone before she could respond. That consultation had done a little too good a job at backing him away from the ledge. And Peter couldn’t afford that. 

The wiping sequence Tony typed into his phone turned it into the functional equivalent of a shiny brick in seconds. He tossed it down an alleyway as he ran past. He couldn’t have anyone tracking him yet. Not until he was actually with Peter. Then he was hoping they’d track his progress right into the jaws of hell. 

Checking his gauntlet watch, he saw that he had four minutes left, but the tall building he need to reach was in sight. He pulled the watch off—that would definitely trip the sensors—deactivated it, then tossed it down another alley. 

Thirty seconds later, Tony was at the address: an average looking business building slightly taller than the ones around it. He ducked his head to hide his face as he ran into the lobby, passing only a bored-looking employee at the information desk. 

Good thing it was after business hours and there weren’t loads of people milling about to recognize him. That meant the elevators would be available too. He slammed a hand on the button to call an elevator, then doubled over, hands on his knees, wheezing like a winded rhinoceros. Even if the elevator cost him a few minutes of waiting time, it would still be worth it. No way was he going to be able to run up thirty-plus flights of stairs without passing out halfway through.

Not twenty seconds later, the ding of the elevator arriving sounded, and Tony hauled himself upright and toward the doors. It was embarrassing how much his legs were shaking. You think he wasn’t a world-famous superhero or something. But the running and jumping had always been Cap’s thing. Or Bruce’s. 

Tony punched the button for the top floor, then leaned against one of the walls as the doors closed. He was tempted to sit down, but he didn’t want to risk not being able to stand up again.

The doors opened onto a long hallway with offices on either side. Tony ignored them and raced for the stairwell at the end of the hallway, leaping up two flights of stairs until he burst through the rooftop access doors into the darkening night air once more. 

He had a stitch in his side the size of New Jersey, and he was breathing so hard that his chest rattled with every inhale, but there it was. The half-set sun illuminated the heli-pad in front of him, glinting off the helicopter the kidnapper had promised. Sleek, black, and coy, not a lick of lettering or labels to give away information abouts its owners and not another soul in sight.

But somewhere on that helicopter was a bomb that could follow through on Faceless’s self-destruct threat.

And somewhere else on that helicopter were the coordinates meant to direct the helicopter back to where Peter was.

He just had to find the second one without making the first one blow up. 

As if the helicopter sensed his presence, the rotor blades began whirring to life. He didn’t have his watch to check if it had been twenty minutes since the text. It was either that or a camera had spotted him and they’d started it remotely in his honor. Yay.

One of the doors opened automatically, and Tony climbed in, the increasing speed of the rotors ruffling his already wild hair.

He wished they’d given him a pilot. He could bribe a pilot twelve ways to Sunday and threaten him thirteen. But he’d yet to come up with a way to bribe or threaten a pre-programmed flight pattern in an advanced navigation system. 

Yet.

If anyone was going to figure out how to corrupt a piece of electronics, it was going to be Tony Stark.

He threw himself on the floor under the pilot’s dashboard, pulling out the screwdriver he’d grabbed and ripping open the paneling to see what he was working with. 

“Hello there, dear,” he muttered as he took in the nest of wires and circuit boards above him. “Don’t mind me. I’m just trying to figure out where to forward my mail for the next day or two.”

Or three or four. Or a hundred. Or zero, if he could get this done right.

It was risky to be doing this at all. If he took Faceless’s warning seriously, he was veering into helicopter self-destruct territory by messing with anything. Tony’s calculated risk was based on one piece of information: Faceless seemed almost obsessively desperate to meet him.

It was creepy, it was ominous, it might just be what would keep Faceless from blowing Tony sky high when he saw him messing with the helicopter gear. Possibly. Tony was about 60% sure. 

If the helicopter didn’t take off soon or started beeping like it was going to explode, Tony would take the hint and go along quietly, but he had to try something.

Find the coordinates. Find the bomb. 

Or find the bomb first and then the coordinates?

Eh, he’d take whatever he could get to first. Maybe he could even find the cameras or sensors that were supposedly watching him and disable those too.

The door he’d thrown open closed automatically behind him, the sudden silence allowing Tony’s focus to sharpen even more as he dug through the dashboard’s electronic innards

The helicopter took off shakily, and Tony braced himself against the legs of the seat behind him to stop from rolling around. That was it then. Faceless was apparently going to let him keep messing with things. He was going to take full advantage of that oversight. 

He was really on the clock now. Who knew how long he had before he got to wherever Peter was? He needed to have a plan by then. 

Maybe he’d disable the bomb himself and use it as a threat or a tool. Or find the coordinates, then hack the communications system, send them to F.R.I.D.A.Y., and summon the entire Iron Legion. 

Whatever it was had to be somewhere in the puzzle of wires above him.

“Talk to me, honey,” he said as he pried off the panel next to the one he’d already sorted through. “Just a secret or two, then I’ll put you back together again.”

The game was back on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm now [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, so come on over and holler if you've got questions or a prompt idea you want to see. 
> 
> Feel free to leave constructive criticism below, as well as what you loved about the chapter/story. I'm always curious about what worked well and what didn't to make my future stories better. 
> 
> FYI, I'll be lucky to get two posts up a week for the next little while. I don't know how I managed to pump out twelve days of daily posts at the beginning of this story.
> 
> Also, I'm wishing I'd given this story a real title other than "Whumptober 2019." Is it too late to change it? Will that throw people off too much?


	17. Tear-Stained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whirring of approaching helicopter blades a few floors above him sounded in the troughs of the wailing alarm. That was new. As was the indistinct yelling that had started one or two floors up. 
> 
> Were the alarms signaling an intruder? Telling people to ready battle stations or whatever?
> 
> The thump of a helicopter landing on the roof no more than three floors up resounded through the building. The sharp sound of a small explosion rang in right on its heels, followed by more yelling. 
> 
> Someone had arrived. Someone who was causing mass panic in the building.
> 
> It had to be Mr. Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So…I posted this chapter way later than I wanted. I got the final proof of my book back from my publisher right after posting the last chapter, so I had to spend the next three days proofreading the entire thing. It was mostly good, but their copy editor kept changing “into” to “in to” where it made no sense, which was nearly giving me fits by the end of the book. But they made a lot of other good changes, so I suppose it all evened out in the end. Hopefully this chapter being the longest one yet makes up for it being so late! Enjoy! (But don't read too fast because it will probably be another week before I can get the next one up.)

The piercing wail of a siren ripped Peter from unconsciousness.

Before he’d completely made the transition from consciousness to true awareness, his spider senses had already ratcheted up to match the panic of the alarm ringing through the air, telling Peter in no uncertain terms that lying flat on a bed like an invalid was the worst possible position he could be when whatever had triggered that alarm reached him.

Doused in adrenaline and sweat, he sat up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed to meet the threat. 

Or, rather, he tried. He managed to raise himself an inch or two before pain ripped across his stomach and over his right shoulder, dropping him back to the bed like a paperweight. It felt like something inside his very core was unraveling, shredding with every breath, with every minuscule movement. 

A body that should have been firm muscle and flesh felt instead like thin cloth, like paper. Moving had been ripping open presents at Christmas, had been snagging a shirt and tearing it wide open, feeling each fiber snapping one after the other. Paper? Cloth? Person? Which was he again? Which did he want to be?

The screaming from his side drowned out the screaming of the sirens. His hearing faded into static, and his vision whited out. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t stop moving. 

He wanted to curl up on his side in a ball, crinkle up like a discarded sweater or a ball of paper on the floor. He wanted to make himself as small as possible and start sobbing, but rolling over used too many muscles that felt either shredded or missing entirely.

Instead he just lay flat on his back, trying to decide if flexing his back was more or less painful than going limp. Actually, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he could flex his muscles forever; he’d give in sooner or later. No more crumpled cloth or paper. He had to be a person again. 

Fully relaxing his body hurt, but as he forced himself to try, the spasms lessened and his vision and hearing tuned back in. Dim red, emergency lights flashed in the hallway and spilled in through the open door of Peter’s room. They held time with the peaks and troughs of the deafening siren still sounding above him, continuously rising and falling in pitch like the animals on some demented merry-go-round. 

His brain tried to catch up with his senses, which were still screaming at him to _get up!_ He was still in Mark’s crazy lab facility, laying on the bed in his room with the scratchy blanket drawn up over his bare chest. The door to his room was still propped open—as it had been since Mark had made his point that Peter had no hope of escaping the rib shackles. 

Oh god, his ribs.

Images flooded his mind: of Mark yelling in his face and wielding a branding iron, of vials and bottles and the hot plate crashing to the ground, of the corrosive mixture eating away at the plugged-in cord of the hot plate and causing the explosion, of being thrown against the forge in the wall, of seeing the chain across the room, still attached to pieces of two of his ribs.

His stomach twisted violently, and he thought he might throw up for a second, the instinctive gag wrenching at his paper wound again, tearing it a little more. 

He vaguely remembered bits and pieces of a surgery, or people buzzing around him, unfolding his insides and trying to fold him back together like a living piece of origami. It would have been easier if actually he was paper or cloth: a piece of tape here, a couple of stitches over there. But a person was much too complicated. 

He was a little surprised to see he was still alive, to be honest. Although if pain meant anything, he didn’t expect to be for much longer. One wrong move and he might tear completely in half. Spider-Man was no stranger to injuries, but he’d never tried to regrow a body part before. He might never make it back to 100%. Maybe 98%? Exactly how much of his body mass had those two ribs accounted for? 

Putting aside the still blaring alarm and whatever it meant, Peter focused on understanding exactly how messed up his side was after having several ribs ripped out of it. One crisis at a time. 

Using his left arm, which was miraculously feeling only a little sore, he flopped the blankets back to see the damage, wincing when his injured right arm rolled off the blankets and onto the sheets. 

The red light from the hallway was weak and inconsistent, but enough for his enhanced eyes to get the general idea. He craned his neck, careful not to use any stomach muscles, grateful for the propped pillow behind his head that gave him a head start. 

The large bloodstained bandaged on his right side where the shackles had been torn out, he fully expected.

The smaller, white bandage on his left side surprised him. 

He moved the blankets further away to get a better look at the left one, which was slightly hidden in the shadows. Without the blankets, he could clearly see the now familiar chain to the rib shackles leading right underneath the white gauze.

For the love…

He dropped his head back to the bed. Mark was a complete psychopath. So proud of his stupid new invention that he hadn’t cared that it working as intended had almost killed Peter. 

He peeled up the left bandage gently, shuddering and closing it quickly when his suspicions were confirmed. The sharp chain went straight into his body, just like the last time. 

So he was still trapped. That explained why the door was still open. Mark was still rubbing it in. Never mind that Peter doubted he could make it to the door even if he weren’t chained to the wall. Merely standing felt impossible, but Mark was apparently taking no chances. 

Peter couldn’t muster the courage to look beneath the larger bandage on his right side. The wound there smelled of blood in a way the first rib shackles hadn’t. It looked deep, so much so that even covered with what looked to be a large stack of bandages, the top of the packed wound was still nearly level with the rest of his side. Like someone had come along and taken a large ice-cream scoop and gouged out part of his side. He didn’t need to see that. There was nothing he could do about it anyway. He doubted they’d been able to reattach any ribs. 

Awesome. He was going to be lopsided for the rest of his life.

He flopped the blanket back over himself, holding his breath when the thump of it landing sent a spike of pain through him.

“The rest of his life” was probably going to be pitifully short if he didn’t find a way out of here, so it was time to stop ignoring the alarms still ringing out from the speakers in the hallway and the sense in his own mind. He was consciously suppressing the urge to follow it’s shouted orders to _Run! Jump! Hide! Fight! Do something!_ But he'd already tried that, and it had not gone well. Instead, he focused on the building alarms.

They hadn’t changed since he’d woken up, and Peter had no idea what they meant. Had Mark lost his temper again? Maybe smashed up another lab and caused a chemical reaction that was threatening the whole building? Or maybe a poisonous gas was leaking through the vents. Or maybe life would give him a break and this would only be a fire drill like they had in school. 

The whirring of approaching helicopter blades a few floors above him sounded in the troughs of the wailing alarm. That was new. As was the indistinct yelling that had started one or two floors up. 

Were the alarms signaling an intruder? Telling people to ready battle stations or whatever?

The thump of a helicopter landing on the roof no more than three floors up resounded through the building. The sharp sound of a small explosion rang in right on its heels, followed by more yelling. 

Someone had arrived. Someone who was causing mass panic in the building.

It had to be Mr. Stark.

Not that he’d ever staged a rescue via helicopter before, as far as Peter knew, but there was a first time for everything. The explosive entrance certainly fit the bill. 

Peter wished he were in more of a condition to help. Shivers of pain were still working through his stomach at odd intervals, and Peter knew he shouldn’t test them again. He’d just have to lay here like a damsel in distress, waiting for Iron Man to save him. Some superhero he was. 

He probably wouldn’t even be able to limp out of here with someone’s help, although the other option—someone bending his side to pick him up and carry him—made his head spin. 

Maybe Mr. Stark had brought a whole team of medics with a stretcher. Yeah, a stretcher was sounding real good right about now. Hopefully this was a fully equipped rescue mission. 

The sounds of violence grew closer. Things were being thrown into walls one floor up. Something big fell down a staircase. The only sounds missing from the scene were Iron Man’s thrusters zooming around or his repulsor blasts knocking over people and walls indiscriminately. 

The sirens and flashing lights cut off suddenly. The eerie calm that fell over the whole building raised the hairs on Peter’s arms and neck. All he could hear now was a set of footsteps echoing down the hallway toward his room—cautious, like they were exploring and unsure of what they’d find. 

Mr. Stark’s concerned battle face had never been a more welcome sight. 

He stood at the door nearly in full view, his shoulders casting a broad shadow onto the room’s floor. Even without the Iron Man armor, he cut an imposing figure with the weak yellow light streaming in around him. He was wearing dark pants and a darker T-shirt, looking like he’d just run out of the lab. He even had a screwdriver poking out from the front pocket. 

Had he fought off Mark and all his men with a screwdriver? Or had he brought backup that was waiting in the hallway?

“Hey, kid. Enjoying your vacation?”

His voice was even more welcome than his face. Peter had almost forgotten what it sounded like. 

“Mr. Stark,” Peter said, embarrassed when it came out as a whisper. He hated how weak he sounded. And how tears had started building up in the corners of his eyes. Keep it together, Parker. 

Mr. Stark glanced around the room, his face lightening a little at what he saw. “Room service looks sub-par. Maybe choose a nicer place next time. I’ve got a few recommendations. A little closer to home too.”

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it.” Peter’s voice cracked from disuse as he tried to imitate Mr. Stark’s irreverent, joking tone. And ignore the fact that he still felt like crying. 

Mr. Stark snorted, his hands dropping to his sides. He hesitated outside the door, looking unsure of himself. 

“So, uh, the door’s just wide open. No locks or anything. Any reason you haven’t just waltzed out of here? Am I going to get electrocuted by a force field or get carved up by invisible lasers if I step through?”

“No, you can just walk in. They, um, chained me up, so I can’t get out.” He felt his cheeks warm as he admitted his own helplessness. 

When Mr. Stark entered the dim room, Peter had to swallow the impulse to offer him a glass of water that he didn’t actually have. Aunt May would be proud to know that the rules of hospitality she’d trained into him had survived a kidnapping. 

“We’ll get you outta here,” Mr. Stark said, looking Peter up and down quickly, then surveying the room. “Just relax, kid. Hang in there.”

The words sounded oddly familiar, but when Mr. Stark looked back to the door behind him, Peter realized something else. Mr. Stark hadn’t checked in with anyone on his radio yet to tell them he’d found Peter. Rule number one on missions was to keep the other people involved informed, so Mr. Stark probably wasn’t even wearing a comm unit. For whatever reason, he’d come alone.

So no stretcher.

Time to decide whether trying to walk propped on Mr. Stark’s shoulder or being carried out had less probability of him passing out. Both options sucked, but they were better than the third option of staying put. 

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you, Mr. Stark.”

He dropped a comforting hand to Peter’s head. “Oh, I think I’ve got a fair idea, kid,” he said quietly, before pulling his hand back.

Of course he did. How could he have forgotten? Mr. Stark had been kidnapped for three months, and Peter had barely been gone for two weeks. Mr. Stark knew better than Peter himself how being rescued felt. 

Peter’s spider sense sent a chill down his back. It was a little quieter now that the alarms were off, but it still wouldn’t leave him along. Trouble must be close on Mr. Stark’s heels. 

“Did you take out the cameras?” Peter asked. “There’s one in the corner up there.”

“Sure did,” Mr. Stark said. “Found the security room first and disabled them. The room was empty though, which was weird. Guess they didn’t think you were worth watching night and day anymore.”

Tears welled up in Peter’s eyes for a different reason now. Mr. Stark was still distractedly looking around the room, as if he were hoping a fully-formed escape plan was going to jump out of the walls. He probably didn’t even realize how much that comment had hurt. _Not worth watching._ They’d left the door open and had no one manning the cameras, so Mr. Stark was right. He wasn’t worth watching. He wasn’t capable of escaping. 

A twinge from his senses drew his thoughts back to the immediate problem. He’d have a pity party later. Even with the cameras disabled, Peter’s spider sense was still warning him of coming danger. 

“Did you see anyone else out there?” Maybe someone had gotten away and was calling in reinforcements. 

“No one I didn’t deal with,” Mr. Stark said. “We’ve got some time before they start waking up and regrouping, so let’s do something about those chains.” He ran a hand through his hair, frowning at the room around him with such judgment Peter half-expected it to shape up right then and there. He’d been on the receiving end of that look, and it wasn’t fun. 

“I couldn’t bring my usual tech, but I hear you’ve got access to a lab here," Mr. Stark said. "Where’s what at? It shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to whip something up I can use to cut you loose.”

He was so confident. So absurdly confident. So perfectly, unabashedly confident that he could take the same resources Peter had been fiddling with for weeks and make something functional and significant in mere minutes. 

No wonder Mark had been fed up with Peter. His brain was useless compared to Mr. Stark’s. 

The tears welled up, one spilling over onto his cheek. But maybe if he kept the crying out of his voice, Mr. Stark wouldn’t notice. Then he could try and wipe it away without screaming in pain once Mr. Stark was distracted in the lab. Peter had no doubt he’d find a way in given five minutes. 

“Yeah, there’s a forge and a lot of gear in it. That whole wall on your right rolls up if you can figure out the controls.”

It didn’t even take him five minutes. Within fifteen seconds, Mr. Stark had popped a panel off the wall that Peter hadn’t even seen. Thirty seconds after that, the door to the lab was rolling up just like it did every morning. 

More evidence that Peter was useless. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. 

Mr. Stark walked into the lab without looking back to Peter, who took the opportunity to wipe the tear away with his left hand. 

“You’ve got some good stuff in here.” Mr. Stark’s voice floating in from the lab brought Peter back to afternoons spent in the Tower lab, cheerfully throwing experiment ideas and sarcastic remarks back and forth. “I’m digging the forge aesthetic. Might have to add that to my own labs.”

Peter really hoped he wouldn't.

The scuffling footsteps in the lab stopped abruptly. 

“What happened here? You try to detonate a hole to China?”

He must have found the giant burn where Mark had spilled the chemicals.

“Not exactly,” Peter called back as loud as he dared. “It was an accident. Mark knocked some things over and they blew up.”

“Well, I hope this Mark guy got a taste of it too.” The vengeance in his tone made Peter uncomfortable.

“No, he was gone before it exploded. It just got me.”

No response to that. Just the sounds of lab work: metal clinking, a stool scooting, book pages flipping, then the distinct smell of a soldering iron. 

Why hadn’t Mr. Stark been able to bring his Iron Man suit? Or even his weaponized watch? Couldn’t he call them at a moment’s notice? Why on earth would he ever have undertaken a rescue mission like this—apparently alone—so ill equipped? It didn’t make sense. When this was all over, he was going to have to ask. But right now there were other things to worry about. Despite the progress being made on their escape plan, Peter’s spider senses had yet to calm down. 

“We’ve got to hurry. I think someone’s coming," Peter called out.

“Can you hear them?”

“Well, no, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“I can’t go any faster, kid," Mr. Stark called back. "I know your nerves are probably fried after two weeks here, but just give me a chance. After two weeks, ten more minutes isn’t going to kill you.”

Peter shut his mouth. Mr. Stark was right. He had no right to tell him to hurry, not when he’d been flailing around for two weeks on his own. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. 

Anyway, it was just as likely that his senses hadn’t lowered their fever pitch because he was still chained to a wall and sort of maybe dying. Maybe it had nothing to do with Mr. Stark getting caught. 

Peter didn’t say another word for the next few minutes, not wanting to interrupt Mr. Stark’s work flow. Instead he focused on seeing that parts of his body he could move without too much pain. 

Left arm was really good. Neck and head weren’t too bad. He could move his legs side to side, but lifting them up using his abdominal muscles was almost a complete wash and so painful he nearly blacked out. His right arm could move, accompanied by a blinding pain that faded pretty quickly once it stopped moving again. And Peter already knew what happened when he tried to sit up. He wasn't trying that again. 

His more specific observations were interrupted when Mr. Stark came back into the room, wearing a pair of safety goggles and carrying a small tool that reminded Peter of the sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who. He knelt by the bed sitting back on his heels and looking to Peter questioningly. 

“I’ve got to ask. What was the plan before I got here? Am I messing anything up?”

What? Mr. Stark thought he'd had a plan? Why would he have a plan that involved still being here? And what kind of plan could be ruined by an actual superhero flying to the rescue? 

“If I had a plan,” Peter said, holding back more tears. “Why would I still be here?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Mr. Stark shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “But I saw about four different methods of escape in the lab just now. I know you’re smart enough to have seen them too, so I figure there’s a reason you weren’t using them yet. Are we waiting for something? Does he have leverage on you? Do we need to blow up an evil weapons cache first? Do we need to grab some evil plans? What were you waiting for?”

Peter’s mouth opened, but he was speechless. He hadn’t known Mr. Stark had thought so highly of him. Thought that he’d be able to see every option he himself saw. Peter was about to let him down. Here was proof that he was a complete and utter disappointment. Proof that Mr. Stark thought too highly of him. Proof that he’d never be good enough. 

Mr. Stark wouldn’t be able to ignore that fact now. Maybe he wouldn’t want to work with Peter any more. At the very least, there would be no more patents being shared out of pity. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. 

But he couldn’t stop the tears rolling down his cheeks this time. 

“Nothing, Mr. Stark,” he said, his voice catching embarrassingly. “I wasn’t waiting for anything. I just couldn’t figure anything out. I didn’t see anything you did…I'm sorr—” A sob causing a jolt of pain cut him off, probably for the better. Mr. Stark wouldn’t want to hear him whining. 

Mr. Stark’s sigh dropped onto Peter’s chest as heavy as any weight would have been. 

“Alright, kid. That’s fine I guess.” He looked so awkward that Peter wished he could sink right through the mattress. He didn’t want to hang around and watch his reflection tarnish in his mentor’s eyes.

“Good thing I’m here then,” Mr. Stark said with a little more confidence. He moved to the head of the bed, leaning over it a bit to get a better angle on the chain laying between Peter’s side and the wall.

“This will spark a bit, so don’t look.”

Peter looked out the open door to the lab, where he’d spent the last two weeks imprisoned only by his own stupidity. The sparks started, the occasional one landing and singeing his arm, but Peter didn’t mind. He’d had worse. He had worse.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” Peter said quietly after a few minutes of nothing but the machine’s buzzing and sparking.

“No problem, kid.” Mr. Stark said, then added. “Well, slight problem because I’ve got a company meeting in twenty minutes, but we’ll be out of here by then.”

Back to the joking then, trying to lighten the horrifically heavy mood that had fallen. Peter would take that over facing down his own ineptitude any day. 

“Sorry, I’ll try and get kidnapped when you’re on vacation next time,” Peter tried to joke back. He looked up, and the unamused, distracted look on Mr. Stark’s face took his breath away. 

“Eh, wouldn’t matter,” Mr. Stark said without taking his eyes off his work. “I’ve always got a to-do list about three miles long.” His eyebrows bunched up in irritation. “Which we’re going to talk to your aunt about when we get back. She’s been on my case all week about this jumping up the list. Wouldn’t leave me alone, so I couldn’t put it off any longer.”

He had to be misunderstanding something. Mr. Stark couldn’t mean what it sounded like he meant. 

“Put what off?”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Stark paused from his sparking long enough to dramatically throw his arms wide. “This daring, heroic rescue, or course. You’re welcome!”

And then he went back to sparking like he hadn’t just talked about Peter’s rescue like it was a tedious errand on a to-do list that fit somewhere between picking up the dry cleaning and attending a three-hour board meeting. If this was a joke, then it was a bad one.

“Put it off?” Peter whispered to himself. Put this off? Had Mr. Stark known where he was and had just been too busy to save him earlier? Maybe even procrastinated it because it was less exciting than his newest tech development? 

Or maybe he’d thought it was beneath his usual superhero pay grade. Was this what happened to seasoned superheroes? Kidnappings became just something to pencil into the schedule when you found a free afternoon? Peter didn’t want to ever be like that. 

“Sheesh, no one appreciates how much time and effort these things take,” Mr. Stark carried on, unaware of Peter’s emotional crisis. “They’re hard to schedule in. But I had to get to it sooner or later. And I should still be able to make it back in time for my three o’cock.”

“Put if off…” Peter wished he could say something else. Something that would magically make this whole situation make sense. Something that would make Mr. Stark less heartless. He didn’t even sound like he was joking anymore. 

“Yeah, you already said that. You know me, Kid. I’m a world-class procrastinator on things that aren’t pet projects.” When he finally made eye contact, Mr. Stark looked almost bored, like he hadn’t lost a night of sleep over the whole thing. 

He looked back to his work, the sparks flying as more tears flowed down Peter’s face. He hadn’t thought much about how Mr. Stark might rescue him, but he wouldn’t have guessed it would be anything like this. 

The sparks stopped, and Mr. Stark straightened up, rubbing at his lower back. 

“Geez, this stuff is tough. What is it?”

“Caminium, probably. I haven’t actually tested it.” Mr. Stark was definitely able to hear the crying in his voice. 

“Why didn’t you test it? You’ve got a whole lab.”

Because he was an idiot. He gave a little gasping sob, and Mr. Stark sighed again, even heavier than the last time. 

“Relax, kid. This is going to take a while, but we’ll get through it.” Then as an afterthought. “Pepper’s going to be pissed though. Looks like I won’t make that meeting after all.”

Peter was about to suggest that Mr. Stark just leave him with the tool and come back to finish the rescue after his stupid meeting, but Mr. Stark jumped in again with a revelatory finger snap. 

“Maybe this is a chicken and egg thing!”

Peter had nothing to say to that, but it was confusion rather than shame stopping his tongue this time. 

“Come on, chickens hatching from eggs?” Mr. Stark prodded like that was enough of a slow-down to let Peter jump onto his train of thought. “Honestly, what do they teach in schools these days?”

“I mean, we studied the life cycle of chickens in biology once," Peter contributed, still utterly confused.

“Pop quiz then!," Mr. Stark announced. "Approximately how long does it take a chicken to hatch?”

“Twenty-one days I think.” Please be right, please be right, please prove that you know _something_. 

“Correct, but I meant how long does it take them to break out of the shell completely after they first pip through.”

“Uhh, a few hours? I don’t know, we didn’t study that.” He really wished Mr. Stark would have this conversation while working through the chain, but he seemed completely taken with this train of thought. 

“Anywhere from a few hours to twenty-four hours. A lot of people don’t know that, so people hatching chicks for the first time sometimes get impatient or start to think something’s wrong and help the chicks break out of their shells. Do you know what happens if you help a chick hatch rather than let it work through it on its own?”

“Uh, they’re born really weak, aren’t they? And they usually die anyway.”

Peter wasn’t sure where he’d pulled that fact from the recesses of his mind, but based on the sudden smile on Mr. Stark’s face, it had been the right one. 

“Yes! Well, that or you accidentally rupture blood vessels in the shell and casing before they’ve had time to shut down properly and the chick bleeds to death.”

“Fascinating. You learn that from Jeopardy?” Peter asked with as much sarcasm as he could muster. Please let’s get back to jokes. Please let’s get back into familiar lab rapport instead of this slightly morbid, very out-of-character chicken discussion. 

“Nah. Granddad was a farmer.”

“Oookay.” That was news. He was having a hard time imagining Mr. Stark, no matter how young, dressed in overalls stomping through mud to slop pigs or learn how to not kill baby chickens. 

“You get it, right?" Mr. Stark asked. "You’re the hatching chicken.”

If Peter saw that assumptive look of _You get what I’m saying, right?_ one more time he was either going to start full-on sobbing or punch it. No he didn’t get it. He didn’t get anything anymore. Couldn’t Mr. Stark just be worried about him as a person instead of imagining him as a chicken? 

“I’m not bleeding to death, Mr. Stark. I’m fine.”

Well, as fine as possibly-still-dying, definitely-still-crying superhero with zero self-esteem left could be. 

“I know that. I meant the other part. You’re not bleeding to death yet because I haven’t broken the shell. Maybe me helping you will make you too weak. Maybe this is something you’ve got to do for yourself, kid.”

The thoughts in Peter’s brain jammed like paper in a printer. Wrinkled and warped and wedged and what on earth had Mr. Stark just said? That he be better off staying here until he could escape on his own? How could that voice be saying those words? That voice that was usually a little distant and distracted and only occasionally dismissive, but never like this. Never cruel. 

“I think that’s it, kid,” Mr. Stark said, actually standing up and pocketing the device he’d made. “I don’t know how long it takes superheros to hatch from a kidnapping—it took me three whole months. I think you just need a little more time.” He ran his hand through his hair again, looking frustrated. “Wish I’d thought of that before coming all the way out here.”

Peter’s brain was still jammed. Was this a hallucination or something? Peter’s mind flashed back to the card he’d gotten his first day here: “Sedatives provided courtesy of Tony Stark.” Maybe he’d really been involved since the beginning. Maybe he was trying to teach Peter a lesson. 

“No, I’m not the chicken,” Peter said, knowing he was babbling but not knowing what to say. “I’m not hatching, I’ve just been kidnapped. I can’t get out on my own and I’m actually asking for help and I need—”

Mr. Stark’s cold voice cut him off. “I can’t doom you to a life of weakness. You’ve got to be stronger than that.”

Peter was crying so hard now that his stomach was shredding again, but now it felt like his heart was tearing right along with it. If even Iron Man wouldn’t save him, maybe even had helped put him here in the first place, then he was never getting out of here. 

Mr. Stark just stood and watched him cry for a few seconds before smiling and reaching up to scratch behind his ear. 

No, to pull at something there. Peter watched in horror as he peeled a thin, shimmering layer or something off his face—the same cloaking screen the Candyman had used to impersonate Mr. Munts. 

Mark’s grinning face appeared underneath. He wasn’t gleeful, per se, but he was closer than Peter had ever seen him. 

“This tech has sure turned out to be useful,” he said casually, ignoring Peter’s pathetic attempts to get his crying under control. “Even more so with the voice modulator.” 

It looked so wrong, seeing Mark standing there in clothes that looked like Mr. Stark’s. But it had never actually been Mr. Stark standing there. There had never been a rescue. But there had been a helicopter, right? And alarms and sounds of fighting and yelling? Was it all an elaborate show. Peter’s brain couldn’t keep up. 

“How was my Stark impression?” Mark asked. “Pretty effective by the looks of it. I didn’t think I’d actually make you cry.”

Peter wanted to rub the tears off his face, but what was the point? Mark had already seen them. 

If it had been Mark the whole time, that explained why his spider senses had never chilled out: he’d never actually been any safer. 

“Want to know the secrets to becoming your beloved Tony Stark?” Mark counted them off on his fingers. “One: insensitive, rich-person jokes, which I actually had to practice. Two: technical and mechanical jargon and know-how, which I already had. And three: a healthy dose of poorly masked disappointment in you, which, I’m sad to say, I already had as well.”

The earlier feeling of wanting to curl up into a ball had increased ten-fold. But the most he could do was turn his face away to the wall.

“What is wrong with you?” Peter whispered angrily, tears still creeping down his face.

“Nothing,” Mark said. “I’m just teaching you lessons you need to learn. You’ve got to learn to be above all this. All the waiting for someone to save you. All the caring so much about what other people think that you’ll cry over it. You can’t be so fragile. Not for anyone else. You’re all you’ve got.”

“Is there going to be a quiz on this later?” Peter asked, clinging to the joking attitude Mr. Star—no, Mark had used during the fake rescue. 

“Nope. I think you’ve learned it well enough. But I brought you a present as a reward.”

“Is it a new pair of ribs?” Peter asked bitterly, turning back to face Mark. Bitter was good. Anger was good. Better than the weakness and hopelessness that was biting at their heels. 

“Oh, quit your whining,” Mark said as he tucked the face cloaking fabric into a back pocket. “Urban legends say Victorian women used to have ribs removed voluntarily. It accentuated their figures.”

Gross. And probably not true. Hopefully not true. And definitely not relevant to Peter. 

“First of all,” he said, wishing he could count off on his fingers like Mark had done, “I’m not a Victorian lady. Second of all, I doubt the preferred method of getting them taken out was tying them to a doorknob and slamming the door like you would with a loose tooth.”

“That’s an untested hypothesis,” Mark said. “Are you volunteering yourself for experiments? If so, I’m all ears. Two ribs down, but there’s still twenty-two ribs to go.”

“I’ll pass.”

Peter wanted to stand defiantly to backup his statement. But the disturbing truth was that he was in no condition to stop Mark if he wanted to run all sorts of urban-legend experiments on him. Luckily, Mark seemed interested in other things. 

“Fine, back to your present then. I brought something much better than a new pair of ribs. I brought you a new brain.”

If Mark was talking about some messed-up brain surgery he was going to do, Peter was so done. Peter tried to figure out exactly how much damage he could do with his left hand as Mark walked out into the hallway, where he was soon joined by several new sets of footsteps and the sound of something sliding across the floor, approaching Peter’s room. 

Mark stepped back into the room. Close on his heels, two of the doctors Peter recognized from the lab earlier carried a limp man between them, each clutching at an arm draped across their shoulders. 

“Say hello to your new lab partner,” Mark said as he walked up to the man and grasped his hair, pulling up his hanging head and revealing his face. 

Mr. Stark’s face. 

Peter’s first, surprisingly rational reaction was how different Mark and Mr. Stark looked. Seeing the two more or less upright next to each other, Peter couldn’t believe he’d even mistaken Mark for Mr. Stark. They were near enough the same height, but those ridiculous blacksmith’s shoulders should have been a dead giveaway. 

But he’d been wearing the right face and using the right voice. His jokes had even sounded like Mr. Stark’s at the beginning. The tantalizing hope of escape dangled in front of him had distracted him from the warning signs, from basic body type differences, from his own spider sense screaming in his mind. He should have known. He was an idiot. 

One of the doctors stumbled while trying to maneuver from under Mr. Stark’s arm and rather than falling over himself decided to let the unconscious man fall to the floor.

Which triggered Peter’s second, purely emotional reaction: he was going to hit his head, and Peter had to help.

Normally, he would have been fast enough from this distance to at least get his hands between Mr. Stark’s head and the floor, but not today. Not like this. 

Peter had tried to roll sideways out of the bed, but the pain and his torn muscles had stopped him almost immediately. He felt like he was unraveling again, the pain pulling entire pieces of him away. He clenched his eyes shut, sucking in a shallow breath. He distantly felt his healing trying to knit back together what every breath, no matter how shallow, tore anew. One step forward, two steps back. Trying to sit up had been at least a dozen steps back the first time. This one felt more like a hundred.

“Don’t hurt yourself, kid,” Mark said. Peter hated the nickname on his lips. As if Mark cared one bit if he hurt himself. If he did, he wouldn’t have surgically installed another set of rib shackles. Or put the first one in to begin with. But Peter couldn’t say any of that. He could only clench his teeth, trying to hold perfectly still. 

Once the pain subsided, he cracked his eyes open. The doctors had left, but Mark was still standing and watching him. What for, Peter couldn’t guess. 

He turned to Mr. Stark, seeing where he’d collapsed awkwardly on the floor and mentally apologized. He was wearing some sort of mechanic’s jumpsuit that was charred in a few places. If Peter focused, he could smell something burning, but his face didn’t seem burnt or even bruised at all. 

The face that might not actually be his face at all. 

If Mark had one face cloak, he probably had more. Who’s to say this wasn’t another decoy? One that happened to be a closer body type than Mark was. 

“It’s not really him,” Peter said in a strained voice. If Mark thought he was going to be so easily manipulated again, he had another thing coming. “It’s just somebody I don’t know, probably somebody who works for you, wearing one of those face mask things. You’re just messing with me again, but I’m not falling for it.”

Mark shook his head with a small smile. It Peter had guessed his game, he sure didn’t seem bothered by it. 

“It’s possible. It would be interesting to see how many times I could pull that over on you, but I’ve got more important things to worry about right now. Like how to keep the great Tony Stark inventing for me as long as possible. I hope you enjoy your reunion. I’m sure Stark will be thrilled when he wakes up. Tell him I’ll be back in the morning for his orientation, but in the meantime, I’m afraid I’ll have to lock the door again. Can’t have Tony Stark running around here like a rat in the maze.”

“I still don’t believe you,” Peter said. But he wasn’t sure he believed himself. 

“Believe what you want,” Mark said. “You’ll come around when he comes around. Or you won’t. I don’t care. He’s just here to teach you the last lesson I’m going to bother teaching you: You taking longer gets other people hurt.”

He closed the door firmly, the lock clicking like a period at the end of the sentence. Not angry. Not hesitant. Just final.

The moment the door clicked closed, Peter’s spider sense settled down a discontented hum. But was it mostly gone because that really _was_ Mr. Stark collapsed on the floor in front of him? Or was it merely dormant until the impostor wearing Mr. Stark’s face woke up? Was it feeling calmed in the presence of a friend or merely biding its time in the presence of an injured enemy?

Without the light from the hallway, the room was much darker. Peter had noticed lights on the ceiling, but had no idea how to turn them on. He could still make out the form on the ground, a few details appearing as his eyes adjusted to the light. But not enough to be sure. He couldn’t see anything that was Mr. Stark’s. No sunglasses. No armored watch. He didn’t recognize the jumpsuit or even the shoes he was wearing.

Peter didn’t even know what he wanted to be true right now. Part of him wanted nothing more than for Mr. Stark to wake up, join him in the lab, and invent their way out of this. For them to fall back into their easy-going manner in the lab where Peter didn’t feel like a complete and useless idiot. But if that were true and that really was Mr. Stark, then he’d gotten hurt because Peter had taken too long. It was his fault. 

So part of him hoped this was another of Mark’s deceptions, even if it meant that he was still stuck trying to invent his way out on his own, now with an antagonist trying to sabotage him. 

As if he needed any help sabotaging himself. 

But at least that way, Mr. Stark would be safe. 

With his left hand, Peter bitterly wiped the wetness from his tear-stained cheeks. He felt like paper again. Wet paper. More fragile than anything in this world had any right to be. His head throbbed from his injuries and from crying. His dry throat and empty stomach were begging for water, but he doubted Mark would be back until the man on the floor woke up.

Nothing to do but wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.
> 
> Also, I'd love to know when you started suspecting the twist or if it was a total surprise.


	18. Unconscious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter couldn’t sleep a wink. Not with an unconscious stranger on the floor of his dark room. 
> 
> His eyes had adjusted to where he could clearly see Mr. Stark’s face, but that didn’t prove anything. He couldn’t trust his eyes, his ears had nothing to listen to right now, and his sense of smell—hoping to catch Mr. Stark’s classic motor oil and cologne scent—was overwhelmed by the stench of blood emanating from his wound. 
> 
> He had no way to know. No way to even guess. Real Mr. Stark or Fake Mr. Stark?

Peter couldn’t sleep a wink. Not with an unconscious stranger on the floor of his dark room. 

His eyes had adjusted to where he could clearly see Mr. Stark’s face, but that didn’t prove anything. He couldn’t trust his eyes, his ears had nothing to listen to right now, and his sense of smell—hoping to catch Mr. Stark’s classic motor oil and cologne scent—was overwhelmed by the stench of blood emanating from his wound. 

He had no way to know. No way to even guess. Real Mr. Stark or Fake Mr. Stark? 

He knew he should sleep, knew it would help his body to heal faster, but he couldn’t keep his eyes closed longer than a few seconds without feeling the need to look over at the man, making sure he wasn’t sneaking up on him in the dark. So Peter lay as still as he could manage, feeling his healing slowly and painfully pulling things back into proper order.

An hour after Mark had left, Peter decided to believe one thing: the man on the floor couldn’t possibly be Real Mr. Stark.

It wasn’t him. No way. He wasn’t going to fall into the trap of believing so easily this time. No matter how much he wanted to. Not a chance. 

He wasn’t going to think about how having Real Mr. Stark here meant Peter had someone he could trust, meant that Peter’s chances of escape from the inside had gone way up, meant that someone brilliant and good would be fighting on his team. But it also meant that Mark was way smarter and better connected than Peter had thought. After Peter’s kidnapping Mr. Stark would have been on high alert, and kidnapping a paranoid Iron Man was no mean feat. 

Real Mr. Stark meant the best ally Peter could hope for, but also a smarter villain than he’d accounted for.

Now that was a trade-off Peter was willing to make. No amount of villainy could overcome the benefits of Iron Man as an ally. 

But it still wasn’t Real Mr. Stark on the floor, occasionally flinching on the ground, legs moving in a way that reminded Peter of a dog having a bad dream. All that was missing was the whining. 

It was definitely Fake Mr. Stark. Life had been too cruel lately to suddenly drop an ally in his lap. He wasn’t going to fall for Mark’s tricks again. 

But the only other option—reality—was grim. So grim. 

The man on the floor was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Not that anyone had described Tony Stark as a sheep before, but he may as well have been for all the harm he ever intended Peter. As far as Peter was concerned, Mr. Stark was as harmless as a lamb.

But this was merely someone pretending to be Mr. Stark. 

Fake Mr. Stark meant that Peter had an enemy in the room with him, meant that his minuscule chances of escape had shrunk even further, meant that he would be sabotaged and taunted at every turn. And it meant that Mark was grasping at straws. He was floundering. If Peter had been playing the game with any leverage, he might have been excited seeing his enemy on the ropes, but as things stood, it just made Mark more desperate and volatile. Peter’s missing ribs were a testament to that. The only upside to Fake Mr. Stark being here was that Real Mr. Stark was still working to save him from the outside. 

Unless he’d gotten distracted. Peter immediately blinked the thought from his mind. Of course Mr. Stark was looking for him. How could Mark’s stupid game have gotten inside his head so easily? Mr. Stark was definitely going to find him soon, and Peter was going to figure out how to deal with Fake Mr. Stark here in the meantime. 

What to do with a wolf in sheep’s clothing acting under the orders of a violently desperate villain?

That was going to end up one of two ways: 

One, Fake Mr. Stark was going to reveal himself cruelly like Mark had done after getting Peter to trust him. And was possibly going to hang around, still wearing Mr. Stark’s face just to mess with him. Because these villains had nothing better to do with their afternoons.

Or two, Fake Mr. Stark was going to maintain the charade as long as possible, maybe hoping to ply information from Peter, maybe building up to a bigger, crueler reveal later down the line. But once Fake Mr. Stark knew Peter was onto him, there was no point in sticking with the second plan. And Peter much preferred that one.

Plan 1 would leave Peter with a pure enemy, a wolf in the worst way. Plan 2 would leave Peter with an enemy who needed to act like a friend for a while, which Peter was starting to think was the best he could hope to get from this situation. What a depressing day when a wolf in sheep’s clothing was the better option. 

If he could keep the wolf acting like a sheep, maybe he could keep himself safe for longer. Maybe even long enough for him to heal enough to fight back, although he couldn’t guess how long that would take. All he needed was to keep the wool pulled over his enemy’s eyes—make him think he had Peter fooled—until Peter found a way to beat him. 

A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Well, two could play that game of deception. Don’t give up too much information, just enough that he thinks you’re being forthcoming. And probably don’t try lying, because you’re not very good at that. And just lay here trying not to cry because that’s about all you can manage right now.

Nearly two hours after Mark had left, Fake Mr. Stark started stirring seriously. 

The tiny slit of light barely illuminated him as he groaned, then shifted to his hands and knees, where he paused for a moment to breathe. He pushed himself backward heavily into a seated position, arms resting on drawn-up knees, head held in his hands.

“I’m really starting to hate flies.”

Peter didn’t know what to say to that. 

Fake Mr. Stark opened his eyes, which immediately widened. He lifted his hands in front of his face, flipping them front to back, then waving them back and forth in front of his eyes. 

Peter must have underestimated how much of an edge his super senses were giving him. That was good to know. Fake Mr. Stark looked nearly blind. He probably had no idea Peter was even in the room with him. Except that Mark had surely briefed him in depth about the plan to trick Peter again. 

Peter’s spider sense hadn’t started acting up yet, but he hadn’t really been noticed yet either. Better to keep things that way, right? Should he pretend he was asleep? Or should he greet him excitedly like he thought he was Real Mr. Stark? Peter really should have made a more detailed plan before Fake Mr. Stark woke up. 

Fake Mr. Stark stood up and immediately patted down his pockets, cursing in frustration when he apparently couldn’t find what he was looking for. 

Peter had tried to prepare himself, but it still hurt to see Mr. Stark’s face and mannerisms again, worn by an impostor. 

A sad little sound escaped Peter’s lips and Fake Mr. Stark’s head snapped up, faced raised like a dog with his nose to the wind. 

“Hello?” He asked warily.

Silence wouldn’t serve anything now. Time to start the act.

“Mr. Stark?”

“Kid? Where are you? Why is it so dark in here?”

Fake Mr. Stark stood, guided to the door by the sliver of light underneath it. He began feeling along the walls at shoulder height, muttering to himself, “Does this guy not believe in light switches?”

“Uh, normally the light from the hallway is enough.”

“That little slit? Maybe for your freaky spider eyes,” Fake Mr. Stark said as he kept searching the wall. 

Fake Mr. Stark knew something was different about his eyesight? Did Mark know that? How? Peter felt like his brain was moving through molasses. He’d already paused long enough to be awkward trying to keep details straight. Time to focus on the most important detail: it wasn’t not really him, no matter how much Peter wanted it to be, but he had to act like it was. Ideally without crying again. 

“No, I’m pretty blind now, but he normally leaves the door all the way open.”

Now it was Fake Mr. Stark’s turn to pause awkwardly, halting his search on the wall and turning toward Peter’s voice.

“He leaves the door open? Then why are you still in here?”

And there it was: the proof that Peter was looking for. Basically the same question the first Fake Mr. Stark had asked him. _Any reason you haven’t just waltzed out of here?_ The first question implying Peter was weak and stupid and incompetent for still being here under these conditions. 

He’d been trying to make himself believe this Mr. Stark wasn’t real against his best hopes, but the look of confusion that was already morphing slowly into disappointment was exactly what the last Fake Mr. Stark’s face had looked like. It cemented it. No way was this Mr. Stark real. And Peter hated that it extinguished a little light of hope he’d been hiding inside, hated the sudden void in his chest that took its place, hated that it still made his eyes dampen in defeat. 

“You’re not you again,” Peter said, reeling in the confirmed knowledge.

Oops. He hadn’t meant to say that. He was awful at being undercover. He could already feel tears building again. He tried to push them down by focusing on his anger that someone would impersonate Mr. Stark. Both that they had tricked Peter the first time and especially that they thought he’d fall for it again now. Idiots. 

“Come again?” Fake Mr. Stark asked. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Peter said, avoiding Fake Mr. Stark’s question of why he was still here. It felt too vulnerable to let Fake Mr. Stark know exactly how helpless he was. Even though he already knew, right?. This was making Peter’s head hurt. 

Fake Mr. Stark had apparently given up finding the light switch, which even Peter couldn’t see. He started making his way across the room toward Peter, his arms held out in front of him like a blind man. He crept forward cautiously, like a wolf hunting it’s prey with near silent movements. Hunting prey that was too wounded to run or fight back. 

Peter might be able to push him away with his left hand, but it was going to hurt. And would give away that Peter knew he wasn’t Real Mr. Stark. Peter clenched his eyes closed, hating everything about this situation.

Something bumped into the bed, and a sudden searing pressure and pain on his shoulder made him yell, his eyes shooting wide open. 

“Get away from me! Whoever you are, just stay back!”

Great job, Parker. Way to keep your undercover cool. He’ll totally believe he’s tricked you now.

Fake Mr. Stark’s eyes were wide as he straightened from where he’d overbalanced after knocking into the bed. His hands had come out to stop his fall and had landed on Peter’s burnt shoulder.

“Sorry! Sorry! I can’t see a damn thing! Wait, _whoever I am_? You know who I am, right?”

It had probably been an accident. Fake Mr. Stark probably hadn’t meant to hurt him. Probably. And Peter had just given away his whole plan. It figured Peter would be as terrible an undercover spy as he was an escape artist. 

So now Fake Mr. Stark knew, or at least deeply suspected, that Peter was onto him. Keeping the wool over his eyes had failed, so Peter had one half-decent plan left: go on the offense and convince Fake Mr. Stark that he was more trouble than he was worth. And cross his fingers and hope that Fake Mr. Stark didn’t figure out that his bark was so much worse than his bite right now. And Peter had never been great at an intimidating bark, so that was really saying something about his bite. 

“I know who you’re pretending to be and what Mark put you up to, so you can drop the act,” Peter said confidently, glad Fake Mr. Stark couldn’t see his wince in the dark at how young his voice sounded. It wasn’t strictly true, since he didn’t know what Mark’s final purpose was, but close enough. 

Fake Mr. Stark still appeared speechless, so Peter pressed on.

“Yeah, Mark beat you to the punch.” Wow, maybe choose less violent metaphors, Parker. “He ran through the whole Mr. Stark script before you got here. You already repeated the ‘Why are you still here?’ bit, but you may as well skip straight over all the ‘you’re not worth rescuing, I’ve been putting this off, you’re making me late for my business meeting, never mind, I’m just going to leave you here until you’re a good enough superhero to escape on your own’ bits. He did those already. Looks like you’ll have to improvise.”

Peter paused after his tirade, surprised at how loud his voice had gotten, strong enough it was starting to hurt his stomach.

Fake Mr. Stark looked speechless, which wasn’t something Peter had ever seen with the real one before. More proof.

“I’ve got no script in the first place,” Mr. Stark said much more quietly, like he was dealing with a wounded animal, “so there’s nothing to improvise. And I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Maybe a bad dream or someth—”

“He peeled your fake face off right in front of me, so don’t tell me it was a bad dream!” That had sounded intimidating up until his voice cracked on the last word. 

“I don’t kno—wait a minute! It must have been that stupid face cloaking tech he’s been using everywhere. Look, I don’t know what happened last time or what this Mark creep said, but it’s really just me here right now. No tricks. No tech. Just me.”

Had Mr. Stark ever truly been without his tech a day in his life? That was a red flag almost as much as anything else was. His plan was to claim that Iron Man had ended up here with no tech? Not likely. More proof. 

But Peter hadn’t accounted for this. What if Fake Mr. Stark refused to admit his deception even when Peter confronted him? What if his new enemy never gave up the game? Peter didn’t know how long he could keep playing, even poorly. 

Fake Mr. Stark loomed over him menacingly, like the doctors, and Peter wanted nothing more than to scramble backwards into one of the corners of the room, but he was so trapped and Fake Mr. Stark was so close. Too close. He closed his eyes again.

Fake Mr. Stark’s voice made Peter flinch. “Would this Mark guy know that Cho mistook your poisoning for an allergy to peppermint? 

“Maybe…” If he’d seen the Epi-Pens Peter had used while being kidnapped.

“Well, would he know that you can’t name a Led Zepplin song to save your life? And no, ‘Stairway to Heaven’ doesn’t count. Every heathen knows that one.”

That was a matter of opinion. One that he and Mr. Stark had disagreed upon on many a boring afternoon in the lab. 

“If you still don’t believe me, try to take off my mask. You saw how Mark did it, right?”

Mark and the Candyman had peeled off their masks right in front of him. It had looked pretty simple. Grab something underneath the ear and pull. 

He cracked his eyes open. Steeling himself against the pain of moving his wounded arm, he quickly reached up with his right hand, fingers scrabbling at the skin underneath Mr. Stark’s ear, looking for whatever Mark had used to peel off the tech before.

But the skin there was plain. Slightly rough, since Mr. Stark hadn’t shaved in a few days, but there was nothing obtrusive interrupting it. 

Nothing fake about it. 

The wave of relief made Peter light-headed. 

“It’s really you. Not just your face,” Peter said, relaxing his arm and letting his hand rest against Mr. Stark’s cheek. 

“Yep. Really me. All of me.” He reached up and clasped Peter’s hand still on his face, unknowingly squeezing the burns on the back of Peter’s hand.

Peter hissed and pulled back, which hurt his arm even more. He dropped it back to the bed as Mr. Stark stepped back immediately.

“Sorry! Sorry again! I’ll just not touch anything, shall I? Not until Mark decides to grace us with a candle or something. It’s like the damn dark ages here.”

“You haven’t seen the lab yet. He’s got a full-on forge like he’s an ancient blacksmith.”

It was euphoric joking with Mr. Stark again. Just like another day in the lab. Well, not quite, but closer than anything Peter had experienced in weeks.

“I’m sure he’ll come and brag about it tomorrow.” Mr. Stark looked at the ground, then crossed his arms. “This guy’s been playing tricks on me, too. Mind if I check if your face is real too?”

Peter nodded, then remembered the dark and added, “Sure.” When had Mark had time to play tricks on Mr. Stark? He’d just gotten here right? Or had he kidnapped him earlier and was only revealing him to Peter right now? 

Mr. Stark’s check was quick, and he let out a soft sigh of relief. He squinted in the darkness a little above where Peter lay, then with a shake of his head, he sat down facing the door, his back pressed against the side of Peter’s bed. If he leaned his head back, he’d bump Peter’s arm again, maybe even bump the ribless wound on his side. It worried Peter a little, but he wasn’t about to ask Mr. Stark to move. Not when it would probably alert him to something being wrong. There was no point freaking him out, especially if he couldn’t even do anything about it. 

Mr. Stark didn’t look like he was relaxing anytime soon anyway. He was staring down the door with a ferocity that surprised Peter. And made Peter realize that his wolf in sheep’s clothing metaphor might have been a little off. Mr. Stark wasn’t a harmless sheep. Far from it. He was more than harmless. He didn’t just not cause harm; he stopped harm from coming to other people. Not perfectly. Not all the time. But he was here now, protecting.

Mr. Stark hadn’t been the hidden wolf, and he wasn’t the harmless sheep now. He was the sheepdog, perfectly capable of inflicting large amounts of harm to protect his flock. 

Peter wondered how a kid like him had ended up in that flock, but here they were, and he was glad of it. They were still surrounded by wolves, but Mr. Stark was staring them down, glaring at the door like he’d jump up and snarl the second Mark—or anyone—came into the room. 

Peter, for the first time in two weeks, felt just a little bit safe. Calmer than he’d felt in days, just knowing that Mr. Stark—Real Mr. Stark—was in the same room. This was bad news in a lot of ways, and Peter regretted his part in getting Mr. Stark kidnapped, even if he didn’t know exactly what that part was yet. But mostly he was glad not to be alone anymore. No matter the cost. He could regret the cost tomorrow.

“We should come up with some sort of password or signal,” Mr. Stark said, breaking the comfortable silence, “so we can be sure the other person is real the next time we get separated.”

Good idea. Peter’s brain immediately set to work. 

“If it were a mutating code,” Peter said, “it would be harder for them to copy. They’ve got cameras all around the lab and in here, so it can’t be too obvious either. Morse code maybe, so it’s harder for them to hear?”

Mr. Stark brought a hand up to cover his mouth—in case of night-vision cameras probably—and dropped his voice to barely a whisper. A whisper only Peter would be able to hear. 

“What if we counted up the periodic table by prime numbers? The password would be whatever prime numbered element comes next.” Mr. Stark tapped out the word lithium in Morse code on the bed frame so gently he had to be accounting for Peter’s super senses again. “You take the next one when we need it next. We’ll alternate.”

“Sounds good,” Peter said, feeling comforted by the plan. Next time he wouldn’t have to wonder. Next time he would just know. 

Still not breaking eye contact with the door, Mr. Stark fiddled with his collar. “This had better not be a prison uniform.”

“No, it’s like a mechanics uniform,” Peter said. “Dark blue.”

Mr. Stark broke his staring contest with the door then to look down at his arms. He pulled back the sleeves to reveal forearms wrapped wrist to elbow in bandages. With the way he explored them with his hands, it didn’t seem like they’d been there the last time he’d been awake. More of Mark’s stupid medical inventions? The thought made Peter hands tighten into fists. 

“What happened to your arms?” Peter asked.

“Taking advantage of that fancy spider night vision, eh?” Mr. Stark said as he rolled the sleeves back down. 

“A spider does whatever a spider can,” Peter said, determined not to get distracted. “What happened to your arms?”

“If I had to guess,” Mr. Stark said, as casually as if he were talking about DUM-E’s wiring and not his own flesh and blood arms, “I’d say they removed the subcutaneous implants I had there.”

“You’ve got trackers in your arms?”

“Had trackers in my arms,” Mr. Stark clarified. “To call the suits. And F.R.I.D.A.Y. could use them to find me almost anywhere in the world. This guy’s tech sensors must be as good as he said they were.” He paused thoughtfully. “But if he removed them here, it’s possible F.R.I.D.A.Y. tracked me here before losing signal. But it’s also possible they were removed somewhere else or the signal was somehow blocked. I don’t now enough to guess which is more likely.”

“They could have done it here,” Peter said, feeling a little hopeful at the idea of Mr. Stark having been tracked. “Mark’s more an inventor than a doctor, but he’s got doctors here all the time. And they’ve got at least one operating room.”

The pause in Mr. Stark’s breathing put Peter on edge, but not as much as his next carefully articulated question.

“You want to tell me how you know something like that?”

No. Definitely not. He wasn’t telling him about foggy snippets of surgeries he remembered. About how he’d been chained to the wall by ribs, then had those ribs torn out and shoddily patched up again. He wasn’t saying a word. It was in the past anyway, it didn’t matter. 

“Kid, I can’t see anything, but I’m not an idiot. That shoulder didn’t feel right, and you haven’t as much as tried to sit up since I got here. What happened to you?”

Mr. Stark almost sounded like he didn’t want to know the answer, and Peter was going to honor that. He’d known this conversation was coming, but he still dreaded it. He wasn’t getting out of it completely, but he could still keep the worst of it from Mr. Stark. Hide the rib thing at least. No need to him to worry about something he couldn’t change or help.

“Lab accident,” Peter said shortly.

“Yeah, no, I’m going to need more than that.”

Fine. A little bit more then. Peter felt like a spy again, trying to dole out just the right amount of information. Enough to keep them off the scent and not give himself away. 

“Mark got mad and knocked some things around in the lab, and they blew up a little.”

A gross over-simplification, but technically the truth. 

“How long ago?”

Okay, not the next question Peter was expecting. And not one he knew the answer to for sure. 

“Umm, maybe yesterday? There’s not exactly a clock or calender in here. And I’ve kind of been…out of it…for a while.” He trailed off. That was more information than he’d wanted to give, but there it was between them anyway.

“Still not enough. Pretend you’re Karen and tell me everything wrong with you. Full injury report. Pain levels on a scale from 1-10. The whole shebang. Classic mission protocols.”

“This isn’t a mission,” Peter said, deflecting. He’d missed Karen recently, but now he was glad she wasn’t here to rat him out.

“Sure it is,” Mr. Stark said. “It’s an escape mission. One that you’re not undertaking on your own anymore, so you’ve got to start communicating with me. All the details. Tell me what we’re working with.”

Nope. So much nope. Too embarrassing. And too frustrating. Mr. Stark’s voice had the same quality it did when tackling a fresh problem in the lab. But Mr. Stark hated finding things he couldn’t fix, and Peter right now was definitely one of those things. He needed to carry this by himself as long as he could. 

“I’m fine.”

Mr. Stark snorted. “Hate to break it to you, but you are so far from fine. Fine got a two-week head start and is basking on a beach in Mexico right now.”

“You can’t do anything about it anyway,” Peter said. 

“I can know how much to yell at that guy when he comes back.” 

As much as Peter wanted to see that, he doubted it would be a good idea in the long-run.

“That won’t help.”

“Sure it will. Everyone hates getting yelled at by Iron Man.”

Well, Peter definitely hated it. Most people probably did. But Peter suspected that Mark might be an exception. And Iron Man’s tech wasn’t here anyway, only his inventor.

“Mark’s different. Nothing makes him mad.” 

Nothing except Peter wasting two weeks in the lab. That made him mad enough to blow stuff up. 

“Please, kid. Just lay it on me.”

The slight pain in Mr. Stark’s voice was exactly why Peter wasn’t going to tell him everything. It was too heavy. Even for Iron Man. 

His quick healing had a chance at making it lighter by the time Mark came back, but he knew Mr. Stark wasn’t going to leave it alone in the meantime. 

“I’ve got a headache,” Peter admitted. “My right arm and shoulder got pretty badly burned. Blown into an open forge, so they hurt to move. Generally sore everywhere.”

“Anything else?”

Like that wasn’t enough? Well, probably not enough to explain his extreme reluctance to share. Or him knowing about the operating room. He should have claimed he’d passed it in a hallway or seen it on a map or something. His silence after Mr. Stark had asked about it had probably been more incriminating than an actual answer would have been. 

“Nothing my spider healing can’t take care of.” That and a super-powered blowtorch to melt that stupid chain. And maybe a bottle of that magical potion from Harry Potter that could regrow bones.

“I’ll be the judge of that once the lights get turned back on.”

“Yeah, you and all your medical degrees will definitely know what’s going on.”

“Hey! I’ve picked up a thing or two after a decade of superheroing.”

Peter chuckled, but stopped quickly when his side ached. 

“So that’s what that operating room was about? Fixing you up after that? That’s why you know about it?”

“Yeah.”

“Any other reason?”

None that he was going to talk about. 

But Mr. Stark was still waiting for an answer. 

“Can we talk about something else?”

That answer was only marginally better than awkward silence, but Peter couldn’t talk about it. Didn’t know how to just come out and say that some crazy inventor had bragged about surgically attaching restraints to his bones and then ripping them out. And had prepared to do it again. 

“Just you wait, Parker,” Mr. Stark said. “When I get back, the first thing I’m going to do is invent some infra-red contacts so the next time we get into a mess like this, I won’t have to rely on your scraps of intel. I’ll be able to match your spider eyes blink for blink.”

“Spiders can’t blink,” Peter said without thinking about it. “They don’t have eyelids.”

Mr. Stark laughed quietly. “Glad you didn’t inherit that spider quirk.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Instead of crazy contacts, I should just offer to help pay this psycho’s electric bill,” Mr. Stark muttered. “Then I’d be able to see what’s going on.”

Just like you offered to help by giving the psycho painkillers for me? Peter wished he was brave enough to ask, but he wasn’t ready for the answer yet. He wanted to imagine Mr. Stark as uninvolved with this situation as possible. 

“Moving on to other intel,” Mr. Stark said when Peter remained silent, “although we are coming back to your injuries once I can see again, who exactly are we dealing with?”

That was something Peter was more than happy to discuss. 

“He calls himself the Forgemaster.”

Mr. Stark snorted, then cocked his head. “Wait, that’s not just a trademarked Peter Parker goofy villain name? He actually calls himself that?”

“Yep. I don’t use it because it’s a stupid name, but that’s how he introduced himself. His real name is Mark Carpaccio. He put a bunch of journals with academic articles he wrote in the lab. Specializes in a metal alloy he calls caminium.”

“Wish you’d been awake earlier to say that,” Mr. Stark muttered. Before Peter could question him, he asked louder, “So, what’s this guy want?”

_For me to become you_, Peter thought. _For me to be better than you, which I could never be_. 

But he said, “Dunno. He wants me to invent my own escape like you did. You know. Before Iron Man. In Afghanistan.” Mr. Stark’s breath caught again and Peter immediately started apologizing. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to work for him, and I tried to wait him out, but then he wasn’t feeding me, and I didn’t want them to ship my dead body back to you, so I had to even though I didn’t wan—” 

“Calm down, kid. It’s alright. I don’t judge a man on what he has to do to survive.”

Was he a man? He sure didn’t feel like it.

“Well, or a kid. Especially a kid.”

That was more like it. Even though Peter still judged himself. For deciding to work and for doing such a terrible job of it so far.

“I’ve been next to useless so far. Mark’s getting mad.”

“Mark’s an idiot, and a lot else besides,” Mr. Stark said firmly. “It took me three months to escape, kid. No shame in taking a few weeks.”

Peter had a furious taskmaster and two missing ribs to prove otherwise, but he kept his mouth shut. 

“Is he feeding you now though?” Mr. Stark asked. “Feeding you enough?”

“You sound like Aunt May.” Who he missed desperately.

“Which I take as a compliment,” Mr. Stark said. “Now answer the question.”

“Yeah, he’s feeding me.” Peter felt like he was talking about a gerbil or a puppy, not a person. 

“Enough for a regular person or enough for Spider-Man?”

“Somewhere in the middle?”

In the middle leaning towards enough for a regular person. Mr. Stark shook his head and looked up at the dark ceiling. 

Time to change the subject. Enough about Peter’s pathetic state. He wanted to know what had been happening on the outside. And how Mr. Stark had gotten to the inside.

“Your turn for a mission report. How’d Mark get you?”

Mr. Stark leveled his head again, his shoulders tensing. “It’s a long story.”

“Involving a helicopter?”

“Yep.”

“And no Iron Man armor or tech?”

“Yep. And a weird ransom call and one of those little fly drones that poisoned you.”

“You got poisoned too?” Peter’s stomach sank. That was not a fun trip. He knew better than anyone. 

“Nope, apparently they can carry regular tranquilizers too. Lucky me.”

Peter waited for him to expound, but he didn’t, apparently happy to leave the story at its bare bones. Not unlike himself. Peter was starting to see why it was so frustrating. 

“How long ago?” Peter asked, copying Mr. Stark’s earlier question.

“What you said, more or less. Maybe a day, but I’ve obviously missed parts of it.”

“Care to elaborate on what you do know?”

“Not much, no,” Mr. Stark said. “Basically, things didn’t work out as planned, and I’m already making plans to install fly-sized drone repellent around the Tower.”

“I bet EMP field at the windows would be more effective.”

“That was my first thought too! Except you come in through the windows. I could program Karen to alert F.R.I.D.A.Y. to disable them for you though.”

“If you’re having fly problems, Spider-Man is definitely the person to ask for help. Spiders are pros at dealing with flies.”

“How could I forget? That combined with your personal vendetta against these drones will make you unstoppable in the lab. That’ll be our first project once we get out of here then.”

Yeah, that sounded great. Just another lab afternoon.

“How are things back home, anyway?” Peter asked.

“Queens is missing its Spider-Man. School thinks you’ve got mono, so that’ll buy us another two weeks tops. But we’ll be outta here long before then.”

His confidence made Peter feel better, which in turn made him feel like a child. Mark was right. He was ridiculously dependent on Mr. Stark to save him, for better or for worse. 

Speaking of saving…

“Is MJ okay?”

“Oh, _Michelle_ is doing just fine.” 

There was definitely a story hiding behind that bitter tone. One he’d have to be sure to get both sides of.

“Thanks for saving her.”

“Yeah, you’ll want to save that thanks until after you hear the whole story from her. Iron Man isn’t used to being so useless.”

He couldn’t imagine Mr. Stark ever feeling useless, not with his brilliant mind.

“In other news,” Mr. Stark with a brighter tone, “Helen says you’re not actually allergic to anything. It was just remarkably bad luck getting dosed with a poison whose effects mimicked anaphylaxsis.”

“Well I’m glad it was me and not you.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course you are, kid. But I still strongly prefer you not getting caught in the cross fire when someone does try to kill me or kidnap me, intentional or not.”

But they’d kidnapped him anyway, so Peter taking his drink hadn’t really mattered. He’d done nothing but confuse the good guys with his spiderness. Then Peter’s first save hadn’t mattered because he hadn’t escaped fast enough to save Mr. Stark a second time. 

“But you ended up here anyway because my allergies confused you guys. And then I was so slow escaping that Mark had to grab you too, so I haven’t really done anything to help. I’ve probably just made things worse.”

“Hey, me ending up here now is entirely my fault.”

Not if Mr. Stark had been desperate to save him. No matter what he said, the fact was that if Peter had been smart enough to escape on his own, Mr. Stark wouldn’t be here right now.

“And yeah, your spider-peppermint thing was an unfortunate red herring, but it’s not like you knew what was going to happen. None of us could have stopped it.” 

“I should have escaped by now. You shouldn’t have had to come save me.”

The echoes of the Mark’s fake Mr. Stark were in his ears, made a little quieter by the real Mr. Stark’s confident, almost arrogant response. 

“I’m here because I wanted to be here, kid.”

He couldn’t mean that literally, but it was a nice sentiment. One that dampened Peter’s eyes again. 

“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Stark. For real this time.”

“Me too.” Mr. Stark shook his head. “I can’t believe he’s been waltzing around with my face. I ought to sue him for plagiarism.”

“I think that would be classified as impersonation, not plagiarism,” Peter said.

“Not with a work of art like this it’s not.” Mr. Stark gestured to his face and jutted his chin out. “Seriously though, we’ve got to figure out how to stop that face cloaking tech. That’s some dangerous shit right there.”

Mr. Stark took a few prefacing breaths, opening his mouth to speak each time, but closing it quickly again. Then, finally, “Sorry for whatever my face said when that jerk Mark was wearing it.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but it was my face. It was personal.” Mr. Stark fiddled with a loose thread on his sleeve uncomfortably as he talked. “I just want to say, in case it helps, that none of what you were talking about earlier was true. I didn’t put off rescuing you. I’d have jumped on the quin jet the second a rescue was even remotely viable, but this Mark guy was too good and I just couldn’t find you. I’ve been doing almost nothing else besides trying to find you because you’re worth rescuing. Sorry I did such a terrible job of it.”

It did help to hear. Even if Mr. Stark in no way owed him an apology, hearing that voice saying those words, when it was seared into his mind saying the opposite, was comforting. Mr. Stark shouldn’t feel bad about it. Shouldn’t worry about it. 

Peter knew it would hurt, but he pulled up his right hand and dropped it onto Mr. Stark’s closest shoulder. The movement elicited a bolt of pain that subsided slowly once his arm wasn’t moving anymore.

Mr. Stark’s shoulder tensed under the unexpected pressure, but quickly relaxed again. He moved a hand to pat the back of Peter’s hand, but thought better of it at the last second, his hand hovering for a few seconds in the air next to his head before dropping back to his bent knee. 

“You’ve done at least as good a job as I’ve done,” Peter said, doubting Mr. Stark would argue. It was a compromise.

Mr. Stark’s cheek raised in a brief smile at that, then fell in the silence that followed. 

Peter left his hand on Mr. Stark’s shoulder. It would hurt like the dickens to move again, but it was also comforting to have the reminder that he wasn’t alone anymore. That someone else was with him. Someone that he could know was in the room even with his eyes closed.

Mr. Stark didn’t say anything else, maintaining his loyal vigil at the door as Peter decided it was safe enough to finally sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first sort of comfort chapter I've written (except maybe Chapter 4?), and it was harder than I thought it would be! But anyone who's made it this far into this whump-fest deserves a little comfort. =)
> 
> Come hang out on Tumblr with me. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there, and I have no clue what I'm doing.


	19. "Stay quiet."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Stark’s left arm was thrown out behind him on the bed as he stared down the door, shaking Peter’s leg gently to wake him. 
> 
> “Kid, wake up. There’s someone outside the door.”

Something jostling Peter’s legs woke him up. Slowly for once, which was a nice change. No nightmares. No blinding lights. 

“Kid. Kid, wake up.”

He cracked his eyes open, blinking to make sure they were actually open. The room was still nearly pitch black. He could make out Mr. Stark’s figure, still sitting by the bed where he’d been when Peter had fallen asleep, Peter’s hand still perched on his shoulder. 

He must have slept for at least a few hours because he was actually feeling a little better. Not on death’s doorstep anymore. Maybe in death’s building’s elevator headed down or on the sidewalk outside, but it was better than the doorstep. Of course, he hadn’t tried to sit up yet, but he wasn’t in a rush to try that again. 

Mr. Stark’s left arm was thrown out behind him on the bed as he stared down the door, shaking Peter’s leg gently to wake him. 

“Kid, wake up. There’s someone outside the door.”

“M’awake,” Peter said as clearly as he could. Shaking sleep from his eyes, Peter could see Mr. Stark was right. Two pillars of shadow broke apart the sliver of light that had previously shone unbroken under the door. Someone was out there. 

His heart rate picked up again. Nap time was over. 

“It’s prolly Mark,” Peter offered. Hopefully not pretending to be Mr. Stark again, although Peter wasn’t going to be fooled again either way. 

“Probably,” Mr. Stark agreed, then he squeezed Peter’s ankle. “Look, whatever happens, just stay quiet. I’ll handle this guy.”

That was the best plan Peter had heard all week. All two weeks. Let Mr. Stark handle the bad guy while he kept his mouth shut. Heroic? Not particularly. Something Peter would love to do anyway? Definitely. 

“Will do, Mr. Stark.”

When the door lock started beeping, Mr. Stark pushed himself to his feet, staying in the same spot between the bed and the door. Peter’s hand slid from his shoulder back to the bed with a soft thump and a short burst of pain. Definitely less than yesterday. 

The door opened, revealing Mark’s imposing figure, his shoulders casting the same long shadow Peter had seen yesterday, when he thought Mr. Stark had come to rescue him. He shuddered a little at the memory. He couldn’t see Mark’s face, just his silhouette, although their own faces were probably perfectly illuminated by the hallway light in Mark’s view. He could be wearing Mr. Stark’s face, just to mess with them. He could be furiously scowling right now, and Peter wouldn’t have a clue. He didn’t like being at such a disadvantage. 

Mr. Stark didn’t either apparently. 

“So, what are the rules here?” He asked casually. “Do I have to invite you in like a vampire? Or are you just going to step in when you’re done with your little doorway power play?”

Mark stepped into the room and slightly to the side, but his face was still cast in shadows from Peter’s perspective. Mr. Stark looked a little mollified. 

“Tony Stark. Pleasure to finally meet you face to face,” Mark said, extending a hand. “I find video calls so impersonal.” 

He sounded more pleased than Peter had ever heard him sound before. Guilt sparked in his chest. Mark was only happy because Mr. Stark was here now too, and he was only here because Peter had been too slow. _You taking longer gets people hurt._ The truest thing Mark had said yesterday. 

“Face to face would be easier if I could actually see you.” Mr. Stark gestured to the dark ceiling and ignoring the offered hand. “I know electric bills can be hard to keep up on, but there are programs to help. You could have just asked instead of kidnapping a donor.”

“See?” Mark said, looking to Peter, his face still shrouded in darkness. “Just like I said. Rich-person jokes. You sure you’ve got the real one this time?”

Mr. Stark stepped to the side, blocking Mark from Peter’s view, and vice versa. “I’m as real as it gets,” he almost snarled. “So you can step off.”

Mark raised his hands and took a step back, but also to the side so he could see Peter again.

“The lights were off because Peter needed his rest,” Mark said. “But if Tony Stark needs a night light, I can be accommodating.”

“No, a night light would be patronizing. Accommodating would be a cell phone or a cheeseburger or those medical supplies you stole from me.” 

Medical supplies? What had he managed to bring? And why had he thought Peter would need them?

“Peter and I have discussed this,” Mark said, not seeming swayed by Mr. Stark’s anger in the slightest. “Only working employees get workplace benefits like food or health care. But light I can do.”

Mark reached into his pocket for a remote—possibly the same one that controlled his rib chain, Peter wasn’t sure—and pushed one of the buttons. Bright overhead lights turned on, and Peter closed his eyes to adjust to them. When he opened them, Mr. Stark had turned and was checking Peter over with his gaze, not even trying to be secretive about it. His eyes paused on Peter’s face, his shoulder, his arm, then stared suspiciously at the blankets, positively glared at the chain leading out from under the blanket. 

Peter knew he didn’t look good. He felt caught in the biggest lie of his life, and Mr. Stark’s scrunched eyebrows showed just how unhappy he was about it. The blankets still covered the goriest wounds, but Peter was suspecting he wouldn’t be able to keep them secret much longer. 

He cracked a smile to show Mr. Stark it couldn’t be as bad as he was thinking. 

“Long time no see, right?”

Mr. Stark barely held back an eye roll, turning back to face Mark. 

“Well, you should talk with HR then, because the health care here looks pitiful. And the kid’s a bag of bones, so the cafeteria fare can’t be much better.”

Mark, who was thankfully wearing his own face and a look of false sympathy simply said, “Yes, this kind of work doesn’t seem to agree with him.”

“That’s what happens when you feed someone with an enhanced metabolism regular-sized portions. He needs triple the calories.”

Mark actually looked surprised. And even a little…guilty? What kind of moral code let you kidnap and rib-shackle someone, then feel bad about not feeding them enough later? Did he even have a moral code? 

“That can easily be adjusted,” Mark said. Then, to Peter, “You should have spoken up.”

He’d thought about it. But after realizing Mark was willing to starve him for three days, saying anything at all negative about the food he was being given had seemed too risky. Half-rations were better than no rations at all. 

Mr. Stark moved to hide Peter again, pointing an angry finger at Mark. 

“No, you should have done your research,” he said. “Kid’s off the hook for your idiocy.”

“Where should I have done my research, Stark? You’ve kept him wrapped up tighter than details about your Iron Man tech.” Mark stepped into view again, and his raised eyebrow made Peter’s skin crawl. “Unless you were expecting me to run my own experiments here. I wasn’t planning to, but if you think it’s necessary...” He dangled the end of the sentence, making the implication clear. 

“No need to resort to such barbaric techniques,” Mr. Stark said. “A simple understanding of superheroes and biology would do it. Good things I’m here to give you a crash course in both.”

“You let me know if anything else I should have been told much earlier comes up.”

Peter felt a little foolish. Would it really have only taken him asking? Why had he waited so long?

“With that out of the way,” Mark said. “Let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming. Today is orientation day for you, Stark, but I wanted to thank you first.”

Peter couldn’t stop his snort, no matter how much the sudden exhale hurt his stomach. Not completely healed then. Not by a long shot. Mark raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.

“Sorry,” Peter said, looking at Mr. Stark instead of Mark. “Thanking people for stupid things is one of his flaws. At least he didn’t bring a card this time.”

“Aw man, I love cards,” Mr. Stark said with a false frown. And for just a second it was like they were joking in the lab, making fun of something by pretending it was a bigger deal than it was. Peter liked the idea of Mark being a molehill they were only pretending was a mountain. 

“Stores are loaded with Iron Man cards, so I’ll be sure to pick one up next time,” Mark said like he was in on the joke. “For now, words will have to suffice. Thanks for stopping by.”

“That’s a dumb way to talk about a kidnapping,” Peter said, his confidence returning with the lab banter. 

“Stay quiet, kid,” Mr. Stark said quietly without turning, but Mark cut him off with a grin.

“Oh, this was no kidnapping,” Mark said. “I gave Stark a choice, and he turned himself in. Got tired of waiting for you to figure things out, so he stepped in to take over.”

Turned himself in? No way Iron Man would turn himself over to someone as crazy as Mark. He had to be lying.

“Hey! Don’t twist my words, muscle head!” Mr. Stark said, his accusing finger back in action.

But he hadn’t denied turning himself in.

“And thank you,” Mark said, exaggerating the words with a deferential hand gesture, “for making my little act yesterday so much more believable.”

Mr. Stark had nothing to say to that, probably since he’d been unconscious for whatever Mark was talking about. 

Seeing their confusion, Mark continued. “The sirens we set off probably would have been good enough, but that bomb you tampered with before we could sedate you on the helicopter exploded shortly after you landed. Destroyed the helicopter, but it really sold the whole thing to the kid. He really thought he was about to be rescued. It was adorable. Well worth singeing the guest of honor a bit.”

Singeing? Had Mr. Stark gotten burned? Was he hurt and hiding it? Apparently two could play at that game, and Mr. Stark was definitely playing it better. But that didn’t change the fact that Mr. Stark being hurt at all—being here at all—was Peter’s fault. If he’d been faster to escape, none of this would have happened. 

“You shouldn’t have given yourself up,” Peter whispered.

“Two heads are better than one,” Mr. Stark said with a shrug, still glaring at Mark. “Universal rule.”

Not if you were talking about heads of cattle headed to slaughter. And you were the cattle.

“I don’t think that applies to getting kidnapped,” Peter muttered. 

“Just you wait, we’ll prove you wrong by the end of the week,” Mr. Stark said.

His pure, unabashed confidence may have just been an act for Mark, but it stung all the same. It was the same assumption that Fake Mr. Stark had made. That, given the same tools Peter had, he’d be able to craft an escape in a fraction of the time. 

“Good luck getting him to help with much at all,” Mark said. “He’s been here for two weeks with nary a breakthrough.”

Peter kept his mouth shut this time like Mr. Stark had suggested. He couldn’t doing anything to help. 

“You blowing up his lab sure didn’t help things, so I think most of it’s on you.”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Mark said. 

Mr. Stark folded his arms, looking at Mark analytically. “So what exactly is your perspective? What’s your angle? Clearly not revenge. Please tell me we’re not a test group for the world’s worst escape room.”

Mark ignored the dig, just like always. “Peter here knows. I’m an inventor. Restraints, torture devices, weaponry, communications devices, a special metal alloy I call caminium. He’s actually been helping me test out an invention or two.”

He smiled and Peter glared. Mark was making him sound like an eager assistant. 

“He thinks he’s an Oppenheimer,” Peter volunteered suddenly, orders to stay quiet be damned. “He loves the idea that anything he’s created is being used for anything of consequence. Thinks he gets to take credit for that. Which is stupid.”

He’d thought about it since that first day, since Mark had made that Mr. Stark-Toomes analogy that had so thrown him for a loop. Toomes had been responsible for those weapons because he was still distributing them. Personally distributing them to people with questionable morals. So Peter had gone after him.

Mr. Stark had never done anything personally. And he’d tried to stop even the indirect distribution that was happening was he found out about it. So he wasn’t responsible. No one should go after him.

But he wasn’t jumping to agree with Peter right now. 

“Mr. Stark doesn’t seem to agree with you,” Mark said of Mr. Stark’s. “He knows he’s responsible for the firing of every weapon he’s ever created.”

“Thankfully,” Mr. Stark said, “neither one of us have reached atomic-bomb levels of world-changing inventions, although I am really curious about that face cloaking technology you’ve got.”

It wasn’t lost on Peter that Mr. Stark was missing the point, was dodging it intentionally. He wasn’t arguing about being to blame for all his inventions. But he couldn’t possibly believe what Mark was saying, could he? 

“Sorry,” Mark said, not sounding sorry at all. “That’s on loan from a particularly powerful associate of mine, so you won’t be getting your hands on that. I’d hate to get on his bad side. You see, I’m very careful about maintaining the business relationships I’ve forged. Which is why I have a business proposition for you.”

Wait, they were both just moving past it? That easily? Peter and Mark had debated whether or not inventors were responsible for the uses of their inventions for a solid ten minutes, and here an actual hero and villain were just agreeing to disagree after thirty seconds? Was Peter missing something? They did disagree, right? 

“’We’ve got a lot in common?’” Mr. Stark said with air quotes and enough sarcasm that Peter didn’t need to be able to see his face to know his expression. “’We can help each other?’ ‘We hope to work together again in the future?’ All that bull was leading up to this? You want to be our dirty, underground contact or supplier or something?” 

Mr. Stark clearly didn’t think he and Mark were too similar then, even if he had let Mark’s stupid philosophy go unexamined.

Mark nodded. “When Romanov is busy, yes. I understand if she stays your top pick for things in her wheelhouse though. Old dogs and new tricks and all that.”

“Okay, not that your little peacocking display of kidnapping a teenager hasn’t made a great first impression, but I require both brains and a decent set of morals from the people I work with. Guess which one I know for sure you don’t have.”

“Matching morals is less important than matching minds.” 

“Even if that were true, Dunning-Kruger, I’ve only got your word to go on, so forgive me if I don’t believe your biased assessment of your own skill set.”

Well, Peter could vouch for him not being a complete idiot, isolating for intellectual skills. Not that he was going to. 

“You can always ask Pete about my latest invention,” Mark said, drawing him into the conversation he’d been staying out of. “He’s been testing out for me for a few weeks. Smashing success, if I do say so myself.”

The awkward silence that filled the room as Mr. Stark looked at Peter almost made him want to try sitting up again, just to have something to do. Instead he stared Mark down with a vengeance, once again committed to the idea of staying quiet. Mark was definitely talking about the rib shackles, and no way was Peter going to bring them up now as evidence of his genius. 

“But if he’s unwilling to spill,” Mark said “then here’s the tip of my resume iceberg. I’ve recently developed a long-distance aerosol that dissolves Spider-Man’s webs, ready next month, thanks to a recent patent I stumbled across.” He grabbed his chin in an exaggerated thoughtful pose. “Where did that patent come from again? I think it might have even been Stark Industries.”

The relief Peter felt when it appeared Mark was going to keep his gory secret was squashed by the realization of what Mark was talking about. That patent was definitely from SI. More specifically from Mr. Stark and Peter. The very one they’d been celebrating when Peter had gotten poisoned. When this whole stupid situation had started. Mark had to know that if he was bringing it up. 

Peter’s heart sank further. Now he was in this too. A baby Oppenheimer. Responsible for his own invention. He should have know that people like Mark would take it and twist it. Now he’d have to worry about future enemies using whatever this was against him if Mark made it public. There was always the chance he was lying, but he was smart enough to do it. Maybe even smart enough to figure out Peter’s web fluid recipe if he’d figured out how to dissolve it. Had Peter started something he wouldn’t be able to stop? Was that his fault?

“Feel free to sue me for patent infringement later,” Mark said confidently. “For now, you get to decide if an invention like that is too dangerous to ignore.”

“Are you threatening me?” Mr. Stark’s voice was deadly quiet, but Mark still didn’t look phased.

“Indirectly. Technically I’m threatening the kid. With his own invention, which will probably give him a complex later. Carry a big stick, as they say.”

Peter felt threatened alright, even though Mark was talking about him like he wasn’t even there. 

“But I don’t have to make good on the threat,” Mark said. Duh, that’s how all threats worked. “I could even shift focus to my metal alloy, which could benefit your suits. Make them lighter. More bulletproof. I can even weave it into fabric like the Wakandans, so it might serve the little spider well too. Depends on if you accept we’re on the same side or not.”

“We’ll never be on the same side,” Mr. Stark said with conviction. “Good guys don’t kidnap and torture kids.”

“We’re already on the same side,” Mark said with equal conviction and a step closer. “The side of the geniuses. The other chips can fall where they want, do what they want with the tools we give them. We can help each other with respect for the other’s inventions and applications while applying them only as we see fit. We don’t have to share a set of morals to be on the same team.”

“Yeah, not sure you know how a team works,” Mr. Stark said, and Peter had to agree.

“And I’m not sure you know how the world works, Stark. Which I find frankly appalling after all you’ve seen.” Mark’s growing irritation made Peter press himself against the bed despite the pain. Bad things happened when Mark got angry. “No two people have the exact same set of morals,” Mark added emphatically. Not colleagues. Not lovers. Not fathers and sons.”

“No, not perfectly,” Mr. Stark allowed. “But you can get pretty close.”

“That why you keep Romanov on your payroll? Because you two share the same sort of morals?”

He really had something against Black Widow, didn’t he? Although she still kind of scared Peter. Partly because he didn’t know where her lines in the sand were. Didn’t even have a guess. He just trusted her because Mr. Stark trusted her.

“It might surprise you how similar we are,” Mr. Stark said coldly.

“Then where does that leave Pete? The most idealistic pseudo-hero I’ve ever met. He certainly doesn’t fit the mold you two have made. And if he doesn’t fit the hero mold, then is he really a hero after all?”

Not when you phrased it like that. But when you phrased it like that, did he really want to be? Did all heroes lose ideals? Was that part of the job description?

“Maybe he’s the hero mold, and we’re the failures.”

That certainly wasn’t true. So why did Mr. Stark sound like he believed it?

“That’s fine,” Mark said. “I work with failures all the time. Doesn’t matter to me as long as your ideas are good.”

“Well, it matters to me,” Mr. Stark said. “Thanks for this fascinating conversation, but it’s a hard pass on your little blood pact or on ever laying eyes on you again without calling the cops. So let’s get to the rules here for escaping on our own.”

Mark scowled, but he kept his distance from the bed and the chain, which was all Peter cared about with that look on his face.

“Fine,” he said. “Peter can give you a tour of the lab in a minute. I’m sure he’d love to show you how much progress he hasn’t been making. Because he’s a little dense, he may forget to tell you that you need to use caminium, but I’m happy to teach that lesson again. You can ask Peter how that went last time.”

It went smashingly, as Mark would say. 

Mark rolled open the wall to the lab, then reached into his pocket and tossed a screwdriver to Mr. Stark.

“I thought I had to confiscate this for breaking our no tech rule, but it’s just a regular screwdriver, so you can have it back. I expected more.”

“You want a better turnout, you got to send save the date cards,” Mr. Stark muttered, pocketing the screwdriver. 

Mark gestured widely into the lab. “If you’ll step through Stark, I’ve got a few thing to say to Peter before he joins you.”

Peter’s eyes widened. That meant nothing good. 

“You’re crazy if you think I’m leaving him alone with you,” Mr. Stark said, stepping away from the door and closer to the head of the bed.

“Just for a few minutes,” Mark said, reaching into a back pocket. “But I’ll pay you for your time apart.”

He pulled out a ziplock bag and dangled it in the air. Peter could see it held at least a roll of bandages and a bottle of painkillers from his angle. Mr. Stark closed his mouth so fast Peter suspected he’d bitten his tongue. 

Mark walked closer, and Mr. Starks tensed, although he allowed Mark to reach around and drop the bag on Peter’s chest. He grabbed it with a wince. 

“I’ll send him in with them in just a minute,” said Mark. “Why don’t you start getting acquainted with your new workspace?”

Mr. Stark looked at Peter, raising his eyebrows, clearly torn between leaving him defenseless and getting those medical supplies.

“It’s okay,” Peter said. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

It wasn’t okay. Part of him wanted Mr. Stark to demand both the bag of supplies and to be able to stay, but there was no point in testing Mark. No point in making him more mad than he already was. The cold truth was that they didn’t have much leverage here, no matter how much they imagined Mark a molehill.

“Five minutes,” Mr. Stark said, still looking conflicted. “Then I’m coming back in for those supplies myself.”

He left the room swiftly, and Peter could hear him start a quick pacing rout near the door, out of sight. 

Mark approached, and Peter tried not to visibly flinch, failing miserable when Mark knelt down so his face was within whispering distance. He clearly didn’t want to be overheard. 

“Looks like I finally found the point of you: bait. The worm on a hook that brings in the real prize. But tell me, now that I’ve got the prize, what good is the bait anymore?”

It was a more apt analogy than Mark probably realized. He was literally strung up on a hook, unable to free himself. But didn’t the fish usually eat the worm? Could you use the same worm to catch a second fish? Not that Peter was willing to drag anyone else into this mess. What good was used bait?

Peter kept his voice low, but not at a whisper. That was too creepy. 

“So what, you’re going to kill me now?” 

Did he want that answered?

Mark matched his low speaking tone, still likely out of Mr. Stark’s earshot. “No, keeping you around was part of my implied deal with Stark. I need him motivated to help you escape, not bent on tracking me down to murder me in the name of vengeance. I just wanted to make sure you understood your new position. You’re not the inventor here anymore. You’re just a condition of the real inventor’s continued cooperation. You’re moral support. You’re an assistant.”

Well, it was better than having no point at all.

“Got it. I’ll just sit here and look pretty.”

“You can’t be moral support from in here. You’ll still be in the lab. Working employee benefits and all that. You can help if you want to try and prove to Iron Man you’re not completely useless, but stay out of Stark’s way. Don’t drag him into all the chemical crap you were playing with. He’s a real blacksmith type, so step back and follow his lead. You’re playing second fiddle now.”

Easy. Whenever he and Mr. Stark were in a lab together, he always played second fiddle. Second fiddle was his jam. He could go pro playing second lab fiddle. 

“Fine.”

“Good. Now let’s get you into the lab.”

Mark offered his hand, and Peter nearly refused it. But the alternative was Mr. Stark coming in to help him sit up since he couldn’t on his own, and then he’d see Peter’s gnarly wounds before they had a chance to heal any more. If Peter walked into the lab under his own power—however shaky—maybe he could convince Mr. Stark that it wasn’t so bad. That he could just take some painkillers and let his body do the rest. 

He took Mark’s hand with his left, feeling his other hand on his back to help him up that way. Sitting all the way up brought back the shredding pain from yesterday on his right side. His muscles definitely weren’t ready for this sort of activity. He should be resting, instead of doing more damage. Cho would have his hide for even thinking about sitting up if he were in the med bay.

What he wouldn’t give to be in the med bay.

He swung his legs off the bed—at least those were working as well as ever, minus a little bruising—but his vision had gone all funny. He would have tipped over if not for Mark’s steadying arm on his shoulder. He almost would rather have fallen over. 

Mark pulled him to his feet and he thought for sure he was going to pass out. But once his vision slid back into focus through the darkness that had fogged across it and the throbbing in his head had retreated to a distant drum, he thought he’d be able to make it to a stool in the lab. 

“I’ve loosened the tether again,” Mark said quietly, handing him a white T-shirt that had been folded at the foot of the bed. “Same rules as before. Probably don’t blow anything up this time.”

“Same goes for you,” Peter muttered, taking the shirt. Standing up without the blanket to cover him, his bloody bandages were on full display. That was more than a dead giveaway, that was a heart attack waiting to happen for Mr. Stark. He slipped the shirt over his head, gritting his teeth when he had to maneuver his scorched arm through the holes and the fabric dragged over his burns. 

He picked up the medical supplies again without checking exactly what was in the bag, despite his curiosity. He was running out of time before his body gave out, so getting to a lab stool was his top priority. He grabbed a barely burned pat of his right forearm to act as a sling and stop it from swinging back and forth. The ziplocked corner of the bag he was holding poked at him painfully.

Mark closed and locked the door to the hallway while Peter walked toward the lab. It was time to face the music. And see how much of it he could avoid. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is the "Secret Injury" prompt. Guess what's going to happen then. ;)
> 
> Come yell at me on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	20. Secret Injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Kid, what’s wrong?”
> 
> Peter pushed himself upright, keeping his eyes open like the motion hadn’t clouded his vision into darkness for a few seconds, keeping his face neutral like the motion hadn’t made his ribs scream. 
> 
> “Nothing.”
> 
> “I’ve seen nothing before, kid. There’s a lot more stars in it. What’s. Wrong.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to split this chapter up into multiple chapters because it was the scene that just kept on giving, but there's not a great place to do it, so you all just get a mammoth chapter for Christmas. 10.7k to be precise. You're welcome.

Just staying upright and walking across the room cost Peter a staggering amount of energy and pain. But he forced a small smile onto his face, hoping it wouldn’t come across as a grimace when Mr. Stark saw it. The chain leading under his shirt that was now quietly spooling out behind him was ominous enough. 

When Mr. Stark came into view, Peter guessed he hadn’t glanced at a single thing in the lab. He was a few feet outside the door, literally tapping his foot impatiently, arms folded across his chest while he glared toward the room. His arms loosened as soon as he saw Peter, and he rushed forward.

Peter flinched at the rapid approach, then tried to calm himself. Mr. Stark had only been out of view for what, three minutes? They couldn’t possibly have swapped him out for another Fake Mr. Stark, right? No, of course not. And Mr. Stark wouldn’t have let himself be dragged away quietly. Peter would have heard a commotion. He could trust this Mr. Stark. Besides, they only had so many prime-numbered elements to run through as a code, so he couldn’t be using them every time he had a minor doubt.

Mr. Stark grabbed Peter’s unburnt arm and shoulder, steering him toward a stool in the middle of the lab. 

“Alright, Spiderling. Pull up a chair.”

The wall between the room with the bed and the lab rolled mostly closed, like it did during every work day, leaving enough room at the bottom for the chain to slide back and forth as Peter moved around the lab. 

“I’m fine, Mr. Stark,” Peter said. Not a lie since he wasn’t dying, but not completely truthful either. Mr. Stark’s grip was basically the only thing keeping him upright at this point. He sank into a stool in the middle of the room, leaning against the short back for support with a pained grunt. He could feel his pulse pounding in his ears, throbbing throughout his rib cage. Or what was left of it. 

“Not fine,” Mr. Stark said, taking the ziplock bag from Peter’s clammy hands. “Remember? We talked about this. Fine is in Mexico, where you, decidedly, are not.”

Peter had never been to Mexico, but it sounded like a great place to be. He supposed it was possible they were in Mexico right now—he had no idea where a man like Mark would put his secret base—but he got what Mr. Stark was saying, that he was far from fine. Now he just had to try and convince him otherwise. 

“Hey, I walked over here on my own, didn’t I?” Peter pointed out. “How bad could it be?”

“I’ll let you know when I find out,” Mr. Stark said as he spread the contents of the bag on a nearby table. The orange label on the bottle of medicine meant it was a bottle of Peter’s tier three painkillers. Heavier stuff than he usually got, so Mr. Stark must have been really worried about him. Next to them sat a pack of empty syringes and a roll of medical tape. 

The last item, a roll of bandages, was slowly rolling toward the end of the table as Mr. Stark was distracted ripping open the packets of syringes. Normally Peter could have easily caught it, but he’d probably fall out of the stool if he tried right now. Instead he watched it bounce onto the floor and roll a few feet away before coming to a stop against the leg of a table.

The four items barely made up a med kit, not that Peter was complaining. He was curious about it though.

“You brought this stuff with you?”

“Yeah, I had to leave in a hurry, so it’s all I had time to grab,” Mr. Stark said, pulling a syringe out, then looking at the painkillers on the table with hesitation. That was not the look of someone who knew exactly what he was doing, which was how Peter usually saw Mr. Stark. That was the face of someone facing a test he hadn’t studied for. 

“In a hurry to turn yourself in?” Peter asked to distract himself from the thought of Mr. Stark guessing at how to use a syringe and serious medication. It wasn’t a very comforting thought.

“It was a very limited time offer,” Mr. Stark said, still staring at the bottle as though instructions would magically appear on it. 

“And what exactly was the offer?” He still wasn’t clear how Mr. Stark had ended up here. 

“Pretty much what it looks like. I get the same deal as you, and we get to work together now.”

And that was a deal how? That was the same “deal” that Peter had gotten when he’d gotten kidnapped. But something had made Mr. Stark take it and turn himself in. Was there something else he wasn’t sharing, or had he been that worried about Peter? Or maybe just that confident he could get the both of them out of here pretty quick. But it hadn’t even been an “I’ll take his place” deal, which Peter would have thought more likely. Although he wouldn’t have wanted Mr. Stark to make that deal either. 

“I don’t think Mark knows how prisoner exchanges are supposed to work,” Peter said. 

“Maybe not. But knowing how to get a bird in the bush to jump into the hand is a very different skill.” He leaned in and inspected Peter’s shoulder, pulling at the neck and sleeve of the shirt to get a better look at the burns. Peter kept his arm in front of his stomach, pressing his shirt against his larger wounds to hide them. 

“Your burns are looking better,” Mr. Stark said with a firm nod. Like he’d encountered the first problem on the test and thought he could handle it. 

Peter raised an eyebrow. “And you would know this how?” 

“Ahh,” Mr. Stark stalled, his face changing back to hesitation before he sighed in defeat. “Yeah, no getting around that. Hephaestus back there made a video call when you were passed out earlier. I got an up-close look.”

That explained why Mr. Stark had grabbed tier three painkillers on his way out. Peter must have looked awful. Worse than awful. Maybe that’s why Mr. Stark had been so eager to turn himself in, because he’d thought Peter was dying. 

Mark had certainly taken advantage of the gruesome results of the lab explosion by making a video call. Had that been his plan from the start? Hurt Peter to draw Mr. Stark in? 

It didn’t seem likely. Plus, Mark clearly hadn’t shown Mr. Stark everything. He couldn’t have seen the state of his ribs, or he’d have called Peter out on it when they were in the dark. If he knew, he’d be worrying about that instead of fussing over burns on his arm that were quite painful but ultimately superficial. Mark hadn’t even had to use his ace in the hole to draw Mr. Stark in, hadn’t even needed to reveal the gaping hole in his side to make his mentor worried enough to raid a hall closet med kit and turn himself in. 

If seeing everything else had made Mr. Stark that desperate, what would seeing the truth of his missing ribs and new rib shackles do? Nothing advisable. It was inevitable Mr. Stark would find out about the rib shackles. Peter hadn’t been able to think of anything close to a believable cover story for the chain leading into his side. But maybe he could hide the bigger injury until it had healed enough he could hide it forever. No need to make Mr. Stark even more desperate.

“Sorry,” Peter whispered.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

“No, I’m not sorry for something I did,” Peter said, even though that wasn’t quite true. “I’m just sorry that you had to see that.” And that he might have to see worse if Peter couldn’t hide it well enough.

“And I’m sorry I couldn’t find the burn cream before running out the door,” Mr. Stark said. “Are these bandages any good without it?”

“They’re already feeling better, so we may as well save the bandages,” Peter said. The burns were definitely the least of his worries. 

“Anticipating needing them later, are you?”

Crap. He couldn’t let on that he already knew he needed them for something else, was already wondering if he’d be able to steal some of them to redo the bandage over the deep wound on his side without Mr. Stark noticing. 

“Maybe. Can’t be too safe with Mark,” was all Peter said. 

Mr. Stark paused, then nodded as he pulled the cap off one of the needles and inserted it through the cap of the bottle of painkillers. “Fine with me. Roll up your left sleeve. Helen told me how much to give you.”

Well that made Peter feel a little better. He wouldn’t have to worry about Mr. Stark accidentally overdosing him. But as Mr. Stark turned the bottle upside down and drew some out, Peter a shiver of worry still worked its way down Peter’s spine.

“Did she show you how to do it too?” He asked hopefully, while awkwardly tried to grab his left sleeve with his left hand, loathe to move the burned right one. Mr. Stark saw him struggling and helped him pull it up. 

“If I say no, are you going to turn me down?”

Good point. Peter didn’t say anything as Mr. Stark flicked his hand against the needle, ejected a tiny amount of the fluid, then shot the rest of it into the muscle of Peter’s shoulder. Peter winced as the pressure built. A bead of blood rolled down from the injection site when Mr. Stark withdrew the needle, and he quickly wiped it away with the sleeve of his mechanic’s jumpsuit. 

“That should kick in soon. You can have more in four hours.” He looked up at the clock behind Peter for a few seconds, before leaning over and throwing the syringe in the trash. Peter wanted to know what time it was, but turning around in his chair was a little more risk than he was comfortable with right now. His core muscles weren’t ready for that kind of torque. He’d have to trust Mr. Stark to remember. He should have about fifteen minutes until it kicked in. It had been two weeks. Fifteen more minutes would be nothing. 

“So, what’s with the chain?” Mr. Stark sounded so casual that it took Peter a few seconds to remember the conversation he was in. 

Oh. That chain. 

“I almost escaped earlier by breaking out of handcuffs,” Peter said, deciding that telling the truth as much as possible would only help his cause. “It was pretty awesome, except the helicopter was too high to jump from or I totally would have gotten away. I guess they didn’t want me escaping again and did this instead.” He purposefully left it vague. Anything Mr. Stark inferred from the situation would probably be more believable and less horrific than the truth. 

“What, like a waist cuff?” Mr. Stark looked curious rather than horrified. “A giant handcuff around your entire waist?”

Yep, that was way better than anything Peter could hope to come up with. 

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Mr. Stark leaned back thoughtfully. “That doesn’t explain why you couldn’t sit up properly yesterday though.”

“I’ve got some broken ribs too. From the lab accident.”

Technically, it was the truth again, but he didn’t think Mr. Stark would look at it that way if he ever found out what was really going on.

But Mr. Stark nodded as though he was intimately familiar with what broken ribs did to a person. “That would explain it. Not much to do about them though. Just don’t move around too much. And take deep breaths.”

That was the last thing he wanted to do. Deep breaths_ hurt_. 

Mr. Stark reached for the chain, but Peter flinched back. Not because his look of academic curiosity reminded him of Mark picking up the bloody ends of the chain earlier. Definitely not because of that. 

“The spikes on it will cut you if you touch it, so just leave it alone.”

Mr. Stark sat back, the look on his face replaced with a dour one. “That guy’s a real piece of work.”

“Yeah,” Peter agreed. “So let’s work on getting out of here so we never have to see him again.”

Mr. Stark gave stood, gave Peter a once over glance, then wandered away, apparently satisfied with what he saw. He idly flipped through some papers on the lab tables, picking up the arc reactor and Iron Man tech blueprints Mark had given him. 

“You know these things are already copyrighted, right? You want another patent, you’ve got to make your own stuff.”

“Mr. Stark, I didn’t make those!” Peter protested, glad to be arguing about something other than his burned and battered body. “They were in a folder that Mark gave me. I think he wanted me to fix them, not that I’d know how. I guess he’s a fan of your work.”

“He’s not the only one,” Mr. Stark said, spinning the pages so they floated back to the tabletop. “I saw those Iron Man sheets on the bed in there. He let you pick those out yourself?”

“What? No! No, it was set up like that,” Peter said, embarrassment creeping into his cheeks. “I think it was supposed to be your room. There’s a picture of Ms. Potts in there. And one of you with your parents at some fancy event.” That just made Mr. Stark look sad, so Peter quickly moved on. “I think he even made a scrapbook, but it’s in the corner of the room where I can’t reach it.” He swept his hand across the air like he was spelling out a marquee headline. “‘The Life and Works of Tony Stark.’”

Mr. Stark groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Good. Don’t read it. Ever. Not great for bedtime reading. You’ll get nightmares.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Peter insisted. 

“It most certainly can,” Mr. Stark said. “Although maybe not worse than this coffee machine. Did he pick this up at an estate sale?” He thunked it with a screwdriver he was fiddling with, the same one Mark had just returned to him.

That attempt to change the topic was anything but subtle, but Peter respected it. If Mark had made a book about his life, he probably wouldn’t want anyone else to read it or talk about it either. 

“So give me the intel,” Mr. Stark said, still looking in drawers and cabinets to get the lay of the lab. “What’s up with this place? What have you tried? What do I need to know?”

This was just like a mission report in the field. Be concise. Be thorough. Don’t ramble. Don’t let on how badly you’re hurt. Okay, maybe that last one wasn’t official mission protocol. 

“Um, let’s see. Mark’s got cameras all around the room. His ultimate goal is for one of us to create the next great breakthrough in technology to escape, which he can then copy and use for whatever he wants. He keeps saying it’s like, well, he wanted it to be for me what Afghanistan was for you, but I don’t know what it is now that you’re here again.” 

Getting off-topic, Parker. And way too personal. Move the report along. 

“Yeah, he basically thinks if your captors had been smarter, they’d have been able to copy your tech. He’d probably love it if you made the arc reactor or Iron Man tech in front of him like you did them. We’ve got full access to all the stuff in the lab. He’s got a whole bookcase full of research he did. And he’s particular about the forging equipment in that corner. In case you hadn’t noticed from the name the Forgemaster, that’s his forte.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Hard not to. The archaic middle-aged feel is almost stifling over here.”

Fake Mr. Stark had threatened to put forges in the Tower’s labs, so Peter was glad to hear this one say something different. Any difference between the two in his head made them seem a littler more distinct. 

“He really wants us to work with his metal,” Peter continued. “He even said if I built him an arc reactor out of caminium, he’d just let me walk away, but I didn’t know how. Not that I would have done it even if I did know how!” Peter clarified hastily. “But it’s something to think about. Maybe if we use his metal, we don’t have to make new technology per se, maybe we can incorporate it into something that already exists.”

“It would just be the reactor housing that would involve his metal, so it wouldn’t be a breakthrough by any means,” Mr. Stark said. “But I’m not planning on handing that tech over to someone like that. What have you been working on so far?”

Fake Mr. Stark’s words from earlier bled over onto these ones. _What was the plan before I got here? What are you waiting for?_

“Kid?” Mr. Stark snapped his fingers across the room, and Peter shook his head. Were the painkillers kicking in and muddying his thoughts or was he just tired? He could still feel a fire in his side, so they hadn’t kicked in completely yet. 

“Sorry. I was splitting my time. I tried building a radio strong enough to get a signal out to you, but that’s apparently against the rules. Getting rescued isn’t the same as escaping. Then I was working on a chemical solvent, but Mark hated that. Said I had to be working with the metal, so we—you should probably start there.”

“Chemistry’s one of your things,” Mr. Stark said. “Mark’s an idiot if he thinks he’ll get better results pushing you into something that far outside your area of expertise.”

Not an idiot. Just someone who’d gambled and lost. Someone who thought they’d known what and who they were getting and had been woefully disappointed. 

“I think he was just hoping I was you,” Peter said quietly.

Mr. Stark didn’t say anything to that. Peter wasn’t sure if he’d been loud enough to be heard. Or if he could bear to repeat it. Because the sad truth was that he wasn’t Iron Man. He wasn’t anything like Mr. Stark, even in the ways that mattered only to Mark. 

“Is this…” Mr. Stark trailed off as he scuffed a shoe over the large burn mark on the floor.

“Yeah, that’s where everything…exploded.” He didn’t really want to think about it. It seemed Mr. Stark didn’t want to either because he quickly moved back to opening cabinets, reading the spines of books on the shelf, and checking machinery specs. 

This was the perfect time to check if Mark had replaced the chemicals he’s ruined or the hot plate that had sparked the explosion, but trying to move left Peter light-headed and aching. Apparently leaning against the stool’s small back and staying mostly upright was the height of his abilities now. He tipped over a little from the effort, leaning his unburnt elbow on the table next to him, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths. 

Great. Now he was stranded on a stool until he either passed out or Mr. Stark had to help him up. Could this get any worse? How long was he going to be able to keep his injury a secret now? 

The answer, as it turned out, was not long. When he looked up a few seconds later once his head felt a little less like a deflating balloon, Mr. Stark was staring at him, concern and frustration swimming in his eyes as he stood motionless by the anvil, square-headed forging hammer in hand. 

“Kid, what’s wrong?”

Peter pushed himself upright, keeping his eyes open like the motion hadn’t clouded his vision into darkness for a few seconds, keeping his face neutral like the motion hadn’t made his ribs scream. 

“Nothing.”

“I’ve seen nothing before, kid. There’s a lot more stars in it. What’s. Wrong.”

It didn’t even sound like a question anymore. It was a command now. He was bait again, being reeled in on a hook into a conversation he wanted to avoid, reeled in by the chain hanging from his side that he’d rather pretend didn’t even exist. 

“That waist cuff too tight or something?”

Trust Mr. Stark to give him another believable alibi. He was saving Peter even now, even in small ways. 

“Just leave it alone, Mr. Stark,” Peter said, neither confirming or denying his question. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“There’s always something I can do. Plus we’ve got a whole workshop right now.”

He held the hammer in the air to make his point.

“I’m not allowed to mess with it or he’ll come back in, so just let it go.” 

“Not allow—you’re not allowed to fix something that’s hurting you?” He was starting to look angry again. 

“It won’t do any good anyway,” Peter said, pressing his good arm to his stomach lightly, as though that would dissuade Iron Man from finding out something he was determined to discover. “It’s not something you can fix.”

“That’s for you to say and me to prove wrong, now come over here,” he said firmly, knocking the hammer against the waist-high anvil a few times. “We’ve got a whole forge-and-anvil setup we may as well put to use. Maybe we can flatten out some of the spikes while we’re at it so they don’t scratch you.”

No way would Mark let that happen. He’d be in the lab in minutes, yelling at them to stop. Probably threatening then with something a lot more dangerous than a branding iron. Flattening the spikes would give Peter a places to grab the chain with his sticky, super-strength grip and try and pull it out of the wall. That was too risky for Mark to let happen.

“Look,” Mr. Stark continued the conversation when Peter was silent, lost in the threat of Mark returning to the lab. “I’m all about giving a man his personal space, but not when he’s hiding something like this. I’m not going to be able to focus until I see for myself that cuff’s not squeezing you in half and that there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“You’re not going to be able to focus after that either,” Peter said quietly.

“What was that?”

Nothing. But he didn’t say it out loud this time. Maybe Mr. Stark would save the conversation again, although he didn’t know what alibi could get him out of this.

“Kid, I’m done asking nicely. Get over here, so we can fix this. This is a mission, and that’s an order.”

Well, that was it. Mr. Stark was using his I’m-in-charge-of-supervising-a-gaggle-of-idiotic-superheroes voice that cropped up when missions got dangerous. On a good day with that voice, Peter had a 50-50 chance of avoiding questions and joking with him until the mission was finished or safe enough for Mr. Stark to chill out.

And now was not a good day. His odds were much lower. Peter wanted nothing more than for his painkillers to kick in all the way and to sleep for fifteen hours. He couldn’t do the joking today. This mission wasn’t going away or getting less dangerous anytime soon. 

“I can’t get up,” Peter whispered, defeated. It wasn’t even the most important confession, but it still felt damning. 

“What?”

Peter cleared his throat and spoke a little louder. 

“I can’t stand up, so you’ll have to come over here.”

The hammer dropped to the anvil with a clang, and Mr. Stark walked over empty-handed. Without a word, he sat down on a stool next to Peter, pulled his good arm from his stomach, then froze with a small gasp.

“You’re bleeding.”

He looked down and saw several spots of blood leaking through the thin shirt Mark had given him. Not great but not surprising. 

Peter nodded as Mr. Stark lifted up the right side of his shirt, his eyes widening at the large set of bandages half-soaked with blood that had leaked through when he’d pressed against it. He was holding his breath. 

Peter kept his hand pressed casually to his left side, keeping the shirt from pulling away and revealing the chain leading into his abdomen. Not that Mr. Stark wasn’t going to find out eventually, but if his eyes were that wide just seeing the bloody gauze on his right, seeing the chain on the left and realizing what had happened might give him a heart attack. 

Mr. Stark released his breath with a deep sigh. 

“Kid, it looks like something took a giant bite out of your side. What happened?”

“Lab accident.” He wasn’t even trying to be evasive about it now, but there was nothing he wanted to talk about less. 

“Not unless you’ve been trying to clone Jaws,” Mr. Stark said.

“You can’t clone a movie,” Peter said before he could help himself.

“I mean the shark from the movie.”

Obviously he had, Peter’s classic movie trivia had just gotten in the way. 

“The shark’s name is Bruce.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Jeopardy, but we’ve already got a Bruce on the team. And you’d definitely better not be trying to clone him.”

“There was an accident. Things exploded. They stitched me up.”

Mr. Stark peeled back a corner of the bandage. The pain of cool air hitting the wound combined with the fresh scent of blood made Peter gag, which hurt. A lot.

“Maybe they tried but, kid, this looks bad. And deep. Deep enough that these stitches probably weren’t even supposed to go in yet. Was this some messed up surgery? If this is why they needed the painkillers I sent, I’ll kill them.”

Killing them was a little extreme. And that’s not what they’d been for. 

“No, those were for something else.”

“That doesn’t make me feel much better,” Mr. Stark muttered as he closed the bandage back up. “Be straight with me,” Mr. Stark started, but then he seemed to realize something, his eyes flitting between Peter’s face and the bloody bandages. “Wait, there’s no waist cuff here. What’s with the chain?”

His mind flitted through other excuses he could use, any way he could stop Mr. Stark from looking at the other side, but he knew it was too late. There wasn’t a bag in the world big enough to keep this cat inside it.

Mr. Stark grabbed the chain to move it aside, not making a sound even though Peter was sure it had cut him. He moved Peter’s other arm out of the way and pulled up the left side of his shirt, scooting between Peter and the table next to him to get a better look. Peter knew what he’d see, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at it, or to look at Mr. Stark’s face. Instead he looked across the lab, holding his left arm shakily in the air so Mr. Stark could look at his side. 

“Does that…go inside you?”

His words were almost too quiet to hear.

“Yeah.”

“What the hell?” Another whisper. Too quiet. 

His arm started to drop, the effort of keeping it out of the way too much, so he let it fall rest on Mr. Stark’s shoulder. 

“I told you. I escaped the hand cuffs, so they tried something else. Mark calls them rib shackles. His newest invention. He’s really proud of them.”

Now it was Mr. Stark’s turn to gag. “Those things are attached to a rib?”

“Two ribs, I think. The lowers ones near the diaphragm.” Thanks again, anatomy class flashcards. 

He glanced at Mr. Stark, still avoiding the rib shackles. Muscles clenched in Mr. Stark’s jaw as he processed the information. 

“So that…‘lab accident’…involved another set of these…rib shackles?”

“Yeah. There was an explosion with what I was working on after Mark messed with it, and I got…blown across the room, which…just…sort of tore them out. So they put a new set of…new ones in when they stitched me up.”

If Mr. Stark’s eyes got any wider, they’d pop out of his skull, and this lab did not need to see any more body parts coming unattached. 

“Tore out the shackles or the ribs?”

“The ribs. I’m pretty sure I’m just missing two ribs on that side now.”

Mr. Stark’s eyes hadn’t gotten wider, but his left hand had started shaking. 

“Oh my god. It ripped…ripped your ribs out.”

“I guess. I don’t remember much. But I did see the shackles across the room still holding some shards of bone.”

That was probably too much information to share, based on the furious and horrified look on Mr. Stark’s face. But the awful silence Mr. Stark’s processing had left in the room was begging to be filled. And Peter had always been one for filling awkward silences with his ramblings. But it was just making this worse.

“It probably wasn’t the whole rib,” Peter reassured. “I bet there’s still some left.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Mr. Stark asked hoarsely. “That he only ripped out pieces of two of your ribs?”

I mean, yes? Kind of? Peter had wanted to make Mr. Stark feel better by not showing him this at all. Now the least he could do was show that he was fine. Mostly fine. Would be mostly fine. One day.

“Technically he didn’t do the ripping. It was the explosion.”

Mr. Stark slid his stool back suddenly, violently, the screech of its feet across the floor harsh against Peter’s ears. His arm fell from Mr. Stark’s shoulder, and Peter dropped it to the table instead. 

“You’re not actually defending him right now, right?” Mr. Stark’s rage had finally flared. Peter curled his shoulders in, wishing he could disappear, that this conversation could disappear. “That can’t possibly be what I’m hearing. Are you actually pretending that this isn't...that he’s not a monster for doing this to you? Like he doesn’t deserve to rot in jail—or worse—for it?”

“No one deserves ‘or worse’!” Peter nearly yelled as a knee-jerk response. If it didn’t before, it definitely sounded now like he was defending Mark. He wasn’t sure how that had happened, but here he was, right in the middle of it. 

He just had to get Mr. Stark to see he wasn’t defending Mark or the terrible things he’d done. He was defending human rights. He was defending himself. Fighting against the idea that a single person—no matter who it was—could dictate the worth of another person and what they deserved. Because if Mr. Stark could do it to Mark, then why couldn’t Mark do it to Peter? If he believed Mr. Stark’s verdict now, wouldn’t he have to believe Mark’s? So that was his defense. No one deserved ‘or worse.’

“People like that do,” Mr. Stark said angrily, pointing to Peter’s ribs. 

Mark had made that same gesture when he’d sad that the rib shackles weren’t bad because Peter was worse, when he’d made it seem so simple to judge a person’s value on a whim and take it as gospel truth. 

And yeah, Mark was pretty much objectively worse than Mr. Stark in every way that mattered, but that didn’t mean Peter could say how bad he was or what exactly he deserved. He certainly couldn’t say he deserved to die, which was every implication behind ‘or worse.’ And Mr. Stark couldn’t say either. 

But why did he think he could? Why did Mr. Stark sound anything like Mark? Was Mr. Stark more similar to Mark than he’d thought, or was Peter so different that he was missing something big? Maybe Peter and Mr. Stark were just too different to fit each other’s hero molds, and what the hell was he supposed to do with that thought? 

“That’s what Mark said,” Peter added bitterly. “Nothing is bad if you decide the person you’re doing it to is worse.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Mr. Stark said, and a bolt of fear struck Peter. Maybe he should have used his code before, because this was sounding less and less like Mr. Stark every second.

“He’s wrong,” Peter said, wishing the man were close enough he could tap out the Morse code on his arm. Peter was too weak to move any closer, and he couldn’t give up their code verbally if he was a fake. He’d have to wait. “He thought one person could say what another person deserves, but you can’t. You can’t be jury, judge, and executioner all at once.”

“What if there’s no one else around bidding for any of those jobs?”

“Then you set up the mission wrong.” Real Mr. Stark would definitely know that. He was always so careful setting up missions, getting the police involved when they needed to be, listening to his teammates opinions. Real Mr. Stark wasn’t gunning to be the end-all, be-all in punishing bad guys.

“I’m reading in between the lines a little here, but let me take a stab at it anyway,” Mr. Stark said, leaning forward enough that Peter wanted to shrink back but not close enough he could reach out and touch him. “You’re saying that, given the chance, I shouldn’t kill Mark for what he’s done? That I should show mercy and let him live to run around kidnapping and shackling other teenagers for shitty intern program and even shittier rib collection?”

Yes. Kind of. Not when you put it like that though. Not when you pretended that those were the only two options. 

“I’m saying _we_ should find another way, no matter what he’s done.” He hoped Mr. Stark noted the pronoun. Mr. Stark didn’t have to decide anything on his own. In fact, he shouldn’t decide anything on his own. Not anymore. They were a team now. 

“Sometimes there isn’t another way,” Mr. Stark said, nearly yelling, then taking a breath and schooling his tone. “Sometimes the other way costs too much.”

“That’s rich coming from a billionaire,” Peter said, hoping to lighten the tone just a little bit. Maybe he’d laugh. At the least he’d be a little less furious with Peter, who was trying his best not to break down crying or pass out.

Mr. Stark didn’t even acknowledge the attempt.

“It’s not always about money, Pete. Almost anything can be a cost. And if the cost is you, I’m not paying that no matter how mercy fits into the equation.”

He’d suspected Mr. Stark felt that way, but it sat uneasily in his stomach to hear it said out loud. He’d started doubting again. Real Mr. Stark? Fake Mr. Stark?

“You should be willing to pay it,” Peter said. “You might have to. Plenty of things are more important than me, like you still being a hero at the end of the day.” In more ways than one. Mr. Stark needed to still be around, as in not dead. And he needed to still be a hero, as in not having done something he’d regret that a true hero never would. 

“What good are heroes if they can’t do what needs to be done to save people?” Mr. Stark said, his hands forming fists on his knees, making Peter tense even though he knew Mr. Stark would never hit him. Real Mr. Stark anyway.

Peter’s only answer was another question.

“What good are heroes if saving people turns them into villains?”

Mr. Stark pounded a fist on the table next to him, upsetting a tray of glassware. “Maybe saving heroes like you is worth becoming a villain over!” He yelled, as an upended beaker shattered on the ground near his feet. “Maybe we can’t all be heroes!”

Peter barely heard the words over the broken glass and still quivering table. He wished he could move. He needed to e able to get up, to back away, to retreat to a corner where he wasn’t so vulnerable, where he wasn’t stuck in this stupid chair while people raged around him. And he knew that Mr. Stark wasn’t Mark, really. His brain knew it, but still his heart beat faster. Because he didn’t know it. I might be somebody on Mark’s side, hiding under a mask.

The implication of the words struck him. If there was any path that led Mr. Stark to becoming a villain, then Peter wanted no part in it, even though it seemed he was already involved. If Mr. Stark thought saving him was worth becoming a villain, what had he done wrong? If him trying to become a hero was making the real heroes villains, then was it worth becoming a hero? Was that just the name of the game, that people could only keep up heroic personas for so long before they fell?

“Please…just…calm down,” Peter said. Mr. Stark’s face was as red as Mark’s had been before he blew up the lab.

“Calm?” Mr. Stark asked, sounding anything but. “How can you just sit there and be calm about this? A day ago, you were on that bed writhing around like you were dying and now, you just, don’t care? It’s just back to the daily grind of working in a psychopath’s lab? How do you figure that?”

He didn’t figure it, and he certainly didn’t plan it. It just was what it was, and Peter couldn’t fight against it. 

“What good is getting angry going to do?” Peter demanded. “This is why I was trying to keep this whole rib mess a secret! You’re getting worked up about it, but it’s already happened and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a waste of energy to get mad, so we should just focus on better things. It’s stressing you out.”

“Damn right it’s stressing me out!” Mr. Stark yelled again. “But you think I should be calm somehow? You think I should just accept that this is a normal, unavoidable risk of living on this planet? Getting bones ripped out of you willy-nilly?”

“It wasn’t willy-nill—” 

“It doesn’t matter!” Mr. Stark cut him off, shouting so loudly that Peter’s ears rang. He knew Mr. Stark was really mad at the situation and not at him, but that didn’t stop the nervous sweat on his forehead, the ringing in his ears, or the tears creeping into the corners of his eyes. Or the nagging notion that if this was Fake Mr. Stark, then he might actually be mad at Peter, might be willing to hurt him to make him understand. “This should never happen! This is unacceptable, and I don’t ever want to be the kind of person who just takes shit like this in stride. And you shouldn’t either.”

“It’s not as big a deal as you’re making it out to be.” 

But Peter wasn’t sure he believed himself anymore. He’d tried to believe it to save Mr. Stark from worry but that had obviously backfired. 

“Not a big deal? Peter, what about two bones short of a ribcage doesn’t scream insane, inhumane, and should never happen to anyone?”

Peter’s return scream tore from his throat before he could stop it. 

“The part where if it’s a big deal, it’s going to ruin the rest of my life!” Mr. Stark was finally silent as Peter’s voice ran away with him until he was spilling everything he hadn’t let himself think in the two weeks he’d been here. 

“If this is something small, something that doesn’t really matter, then I can sweep it under the rug and leave it here when we escape. But if it’s a big deal, then it means I can’t stop big deals from happening! It’s more proof that I’m not good enough, and that’s going to follow me around no matter where I go or how many ribs I’m missing.”

He took a shuddering breath, the exertion of yelling making him light-headed, but he was unable to stop himself. Mr. Stark took a step closer but was still silent, looking both worried and guilty.

“Ben was a big deal, and I couldn’t stop that. I had these powers and did nothing, and the bad thing happened, and that was on me. Well, this time I had these powers and I used them—I tried my best—but the bad things happened anyway—to me, to MJ, to you—and that’s still on me. None of the stupid little stuff I do as Spider-Man matters if I can’t stop big bad things from happening when it counts. How can I even think about trying to be a hero if I know what I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place, I’m completely powerless? That at any moment someone can just grab me off the streets and take me God only knows where and leash me like a dog and make me work in a crazy lab making stuff for bad guys and use me to bait a real superhero here too?”

Mr. Stark looked like he had something to say to that, but Peter couldn’t let him because once he stopped he might never start again. 

“This can’t be a big deal, Mr. Stark, because if it is, then it’s never going away. I’m never going to get away from this because it’s where I learned that Ben wasn’t a fluke. That I really don’t have the power to make a difference and stop big, bad things from happening. That I can’t do anything when it really matters!”

Peter was clenching his fists—burned and not—so tightly they were shaking. But it wasn’t his fists, it was his whole body. He was gasping for air like a fish, wincing at the pain in his side with each shallow inhale. It was a foggy pain with the painkillers starting to kick in, but the lack of feeling was making him even more unbalanced. He reached for the table next to him to stabilize himself, but tipped too far, falling from the stool, his core muscles to weak to recover himself.

Mr. Stark lunged forward, bracing one hand against the table and throwing the other under Peter’s arm and around his back. His burned arm, but as he was lowered slowly to the floor, Peter decided he’d take someone touching his burns over cracking his head on the floor any day. His head was already hurting plenty without adding blunt trauma to the mix. 

A voice wove back into his ears as he lay on the floor, and he felt a hand squeezing his good shoulder gently. 

“You’re alright kid, just relax. Here let me get—”

He moved to stand, but Peter grabbed his sleeve and tugged him back, not even caring that he’d used his bad hand. He couldn’t let Mr. Stark get away yet. He started tapping the code desperately on his forearm, worried he might not get the chance again. This was probably the Real Mr. Stark, but he’d been so angry. Broken something like Mark. Seemed to believe some of the same things. 

_B-O-R-O-N. B-O-R-O-N. B-O-R-O-N. _

It only took three times before understanding lit up in Mr. Stark’s eyes, tainted quickly by sadness.

“What? Yeah, kid, of course it’s me. Really me. I’m sorry, so sorry.”

He tapped a response back on Peter’s good shoulder. 

_N-I-T-R-O-G-E-N. N-I-T-R-O-G-E-N. N-I-T-R-O-G-E-N._

Peter dropped his head back to the ground with a thunk and released Mr. Stark’s sleeve. He could feel his pulse pounding a dull drumbeat throughout his body. 

“I’ll be right back,” Mr. Stark said quietly. Peter watched as he crossed the lab, pulling two lab coats out of a cabinet and walking back over. He draped one over Peter’s shaking form. It wasn’t very warm, but the thought behind it was comforting. The other, he folded up, helping to lift Peter’s head so he could slide it under as a makeshift pillow. 

He sat on the floor under a table near Peter’s left side, where he could be seen easily, his arms casually wrapped around his tilted knees while he waited for, well, Peter didn’t know what he was waiting for. He focused on relaxing tense muscles and slowing his breathing. It slowed quickly, and maybe a little too much, which was another sign the painkillers were really kicking in. 

“Jersey.” 

Peter’s mind tried to prep for another conversation with Mr. Stark, but he was already lost. 

“What?”

“I’m like, 80% sure we’re somewhere in Jersey,” he said in a quiet voice. 

“And that helps us how?”

“It doesn’t really, but it was the only part of your rant that I have a real answer to.” It seemed like the anger was gone, which Peter was glad of, but the resolute sadness that had replaced it dropped a different sort of weight on his chest. Mr. Stark sighed, maybe feeling some of the same weight. “You’re not going to leave this here, kid. Big deal or small. And that’s okay.” He shrugged. “Well, not really. This whole thing is so far from okay. But when someone drops you off a thousand miles from okay, it’s okay if it takes you a while to get back to okay. Does that make any sense?”

It did. Even though Peter didn’t like it. He wanted to be okay _now_. 

“But in the meantime,” Mr. Stark continued, “you’re supposed to be mad at shit like this. You’re supposed to be outraged. You’re supposed to feel violated. You’re supposed to yell to the sky that nothing about this is right or okay.”

Easy to say if you were a famous billionaire superhero whose audience hung on his every word.

“No one will hear me,” Peter whispered, which was his real fear here. No one had been around to hear him or help him when he’d gotten kidnapped. Mark hadn’t heard his argument that this was wrong. The doctors hadn’t heard him. Mr. Stark hadn’t been hearing him. And there was no one else. 

Mr. Stark settled his hand back on Peter’s good shoulder, not moving it or squeezing, just letting it rest there like Peter had done the night before. And Peter could finally close his eyes for a minute, knowing that Real Mr. Stark was still standing guard nearby. 

“Just saying the words matters, kid. Even if no one else hears the words. You’ll hear them.”

What exactly did he need to hear? What did he need to say? That Mark was crazy? That Mark was evil? That he deserved to be in jail? That he deserved to die? That none of this was Peter’s fault? Would saying any of it really help? Really make any of it more or less true?

Mr. Stark interrupted his thoughts. “And I’ll be around to holler at that Mark guy so he doesn’t think this is at all a normal way to conduct business, although he seems crazy enough that even Iron Man might not be able to get through to him.”

“He could be worse, you know.” Peter said. “I’ve met worse.” He didn’t want to be defending Mark—didn’t want to defend any villain he came across—but he had to get Mr. Stark to understand that he couldn’t just kill him if he got the chance.

“That’s not a ringing endorsement. But you can keep saying that now since I’m here to yell at him for you.”

“Because everyone hates being yelled at by Iron Man,” Peter said, smiling wryly at the reference to last night’s conversation.

“Damn right they do,” Mr. Stark said firmly. Then he looked to the side, tightened his grip around his knees, and look back to Peter hesitantly. “Look, kid. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to. You can only lie to yourself for so long. This is a big deal. What’s happening here should never happen to anyone. It is so wrong on so many levels. This is the kind of traumatizing shit that messes people up.”

Peter had nothing to say to that. He probably would have come to the same conclusion earlier if he’d let himself think about it for more than two minutes, but now here it was. He couldn’t avoid it anymore. Now the question was how messed up was he going to be after this?

“I know that’s stupid and I know that’s scary,” Mr. Stark continued. “But that’s sort of one of the hard truths of the grown-up world. Life messes you up. Pretty universally across the board, in different ways to different people. Life loves to show you how little power you really have in the grand scheme of things, even if you’re a superhero—which you are.” He paused there and glared at Peter, as if to make sure he got the message. He waited until Peter nodded to continue. “Sometimes all you can do is stand up and give life the middle finger until you’ve got the power to do something more.”

He didn’t know if he could do that. Didn’t know how to do that. But maybe he should try it because Mr. Stark was the best person to be giving advice about something like this. 

“Is that how you got through Afghanistan?” Peter asked, knowing he was crossing a line but hoping Mr. Stark would forgive him for it.

He was quick to answer. 

“Yep. Middle fingers all the way through. Literally and figuratively, until they threatened to cut off the literal finger.”

Peter’s eyes widened, and Mr. Stark chuckled.

“I’m joking, kid. Don’t look so freaked out. But I did try and stick it to them where I could.”

But that wasn’t the whole story. That wasn’t the part they’d learned about in history class and that the news reports loved repeating. 

“Middle fingers all the way until you made Iron Man.”

“More or less.”

Which was exactly the problem here. Mr. Stark had been able to invent his way into a new life. Peter had been trying for two weeks. He didn’t know how much longer his middle fingers could last. 

“So what am I going to make? I already had Spider-Man, and he wasn’t enough to stop this.”

A squeeze to his shoulder and a pause told him Mr. Stark didn’t have an easy answer. And if Tony Stark didn’t have answers, what hope did he have? 

“We’ll have to wait and see, kid. We’re not there yet. You only know once you come out the other side of something like this. But me coming here? That’s a middle finger to their plans and their arrogance. I couldn’t do anything out there. Life was showing me just how useless I was, so I did the one thing I could. I came in here with you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Peter said. But when he phrased it like that, he thought he might have done the same thing were their positions switched. 

“My middle finger, not yours,” Mr. Stark reminded. “I got to choose.”

“I think you’re better at middle fingers than I am,” Peter said. 

“Probably,” Mr. Stark said with a small laugh. “I’ve had more practice. But…and I don’t know if this’ll make you feel better or worse, kid…but this will follow me too. You’re not the only one who’s not okay. Just the idea of letting you walk the streets of New York again once we’re out gives me palpitations. But we’ll get back to okay. It’s not a fun trip, but it’s not the end of the world.”

Peter lay under the lab coat, shaking less than he had been a few minutes ago when he’d tipped out of the stool. The painkillers had kicked in too, so his side was merely aching lightly instead of stabbing sharply with each deep breath. He looked up at the ceiling of the lab, feeling Mr. Stark’s eyes on him, feeling his steady hand still grasping his shoulder. He felt a little better, but it was more than just pain relief. It was a feeling of having someone else on his team. Someone else who had run this gauntlet and made it out the other side. Someone who was so unafraid of it that he’d willingly jumped in for round two. Surely that meant they’d be able to pull through it. 

“That was pretty good,” Peter said. 

The full laugh Mr. Stark let out made him feel even lighter. 

“Good to know that the entire sum of my forty-plus years gaining wisdom on this rock can be summed up as ‘pretty good.’”

“If you ever write your autobiography, Spider-Man can blurb the back of it with that quote: ‘This was pretty good.’”

“Deal,” Mr. Stark said. “_If_ I ever write it.”

“I’ll be first in line to get my copy signed. And I’ll make you address it to Spider-Man.”

Mr. Stark smiled, then looked to his feet guiltily, clearing his throat. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you, kid. Shouldn’t have made you doubt I was…It’s just that this guy is certifiably insane. Completely crazy. You’ve got to see that. And it makes me a little crazy too. Even crazier when you refuse to see it. But I meant what I said before. I don’t judge a man on what he has to do to survive.” Peter noticed that he didn’t clarify the phrase this time. Man, not kid. “Don’t bite the hand that feed you and all that. I get it. If you can’t hate this guy yet, that’s fine. I’ll hate him enough for the both of us. You do what you’ve got to do to survive.”

Peter just sat with that apology. Lay with it, technically. He did hate Mark, right? You didn’t have to be mad enough to kill someone in order to hate them. He hated him on a professional level—the way Spider-Man hated every criminal who threatened the safety of New York. But he also hated him on a personal level—in a way he’d never experienced before. Almost the way he’d hated the man who shot Ben, but there was less righteous anger and revenge with this hatred. And more shame. And more weakness.

He hated Mark, but he couldn’t afford to challenge him. Not before when he though MJ was still in danger and when the rib shackles had merely been a threat. Not now when Mark had followed through with the threat and he was down two ribs and most of his strength. 

Maybe he should have attacked Mark right off, the first time he’d seen him. But he hadn’t given Peter much opportunity. He’d stayed away from Peter even after he’d had the rib shackles put in. Peter might have been able to take him down when he’d stormed into the lab the day of the explosion. He’d gotten right in Peter’s face then. But Peter had been so taken aback. And Mark had probably had accomplices who would protect him or avenge him. And then Mark had grabbed the branding iron and broken things before Peter could even really think about attacking him. 

But just a few minutes ago, Mark had been inches from Peter, handing him medical supplies, helping him sit up, whispering threats. He’d stayed out of arm’s reach before, but now he didn’t seem to think Peter was any sort of threat at all. Peter hated Mark as an enemy, but he also respected him as a dangerous one. But Mark hated Peter without respecting him as an enemy. Hated him for not being Mr. Stark, for ruining his plans left and right, even on accident. He hated Peter, but he didn’t feel threatened by him.

Which made Peter feel ever weaker than missing ribs made him feel.

“Are those painkillers doing their job yet?” Mr. Stark asked.

“What? Yeah. It’s just an ache now. Not nearly as sharp. Way better.”

Mr. Stark’s smile was hard but genuine, acknowledging the only amount of comfort he’d been able to give. 

“Good. Think you can lay on your side for a few minutes? That bandage looked pretty soaked, so I can change it out for you.”

Gross. Mr. Stark wasn’t a doctor. He was only offering to be nice. And because he was the only option. And as much as Peter wanted to insist he’d do it himself, he knew he wouldn’t be able to contort enough to the side to do a decent job of it. 

“Yeah, I think so. Good thing we saved those bandages, right?”

“Sure, kid,” Mr. Stark said as he stood, grabbing the bandages that had fallen on the floor earlier as he did. He found the tape on the table along with a pair of scissors, then knelt down next to Peter, helping to push him on his side with a hands at his shoulder and hip. The chain got in the way with a few sharp cuts, so they settled on wedging one of the coats under Peter’s back, leaving him half on his side. It was stupid he couldn’t roll over on his own. How was he ever supposed to be good moral support this way? It wasn’t going to be enough for Mark. 

He curled up his arms by his chest as Mr. Stark peeled back the bandage. It didn’t hurt nearly as bad this time, just enough for Peter to clench his teeth. Mr. Stark was quick enough about it, spooling some bandages out and folding them up to fit the hole in his side and laying them on the wound. The scritch of tape unrolling was quickly followed by a clip of scissors. 

“Guess you technically weren’t lying about the broken ribs earlier,” Mr. Stark said tiredly as he taped up the edges. 

“Of course,” Peter said. “I try to lie as little as possible.”

“Oh really? ‘I’m fine’ wasn’t a lie?”

“I’m fine is always a matter of opinion,” Peter said in defense. And a matter of perspective.

Mr. Stark shook his head slowly. “If missing two ribs is relatively fine, I don’t think I can handle whatever else has been going on here.”

“This is the worst of it. I promise. I just meant that I’m not dead or anything, and I’ve got my healing. So, relatively, I’ll be fine.”

“Helen said she thought your healing was slowing down. Malnutrition.”

Oh. That would explain a lot actually. After three days of no food and half-rations after that, he probably should have predicted that himself. 

“Yeah, that makes sense, but it’s still working a little I think. And you told Mark about the food problem, so it should get better soon.”

Mr. Stark taped off the last side of the bandage, pulling the blood-stained side of Peter’s shirt back down. He did not look reassured. 

“How about a compromise,” Peter offered. “I’m not fine, but I will be.”

Mr. Stark helped him roll flat again, draped the lab coat back over him, and sat down in nearly the same spot as before.

“I can live with that for now.”

And that was all Peter needed. The sort of uneasy truce they’d come to. Peter didn’t have anything left to hide, Mr. Stark had done what he could, and he’d given Peter a lot to think about besides. Which was fine because he just wanted to lay on the ground and think for the rest of the day. But would Mark allow that? He’d never given Peter specific rules, but one of the things he did know was if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. And Peter couldn’t afford that right now. 

“Me too,” Peter said, then as an afterthought, “I’m just glad they didn’t give you one of these too.”

“Yeah, I’m glad they think a fifteen-year-old kid is more of a threat than Iron Man. That’s real flattering.”

“Are you jealous that he thinks Spider-Man is more dangerous?” Peter joked, even though the opposite was pretty clear. 

“Nope, no thanks.” Mr. Stark held up his forearms with the bandages peeking through at the wrists. “I’ve already met my quota for non-consensual surgeries for this kidnapping. One per trip. That’s my policy.”

A policy he’d started in Afghanistan, Peter realized with a start, and probably not on purpose. He hadn’t meant to joke about that, to make Mr. Stark think about that. But if Mark had his way, it was inevitable that this reminded Mr. Stark of Afghanistan almost constantly.

“So, what are the odds we’ll be able to talk Mark out of some suture supplies the next time we see him?” Mr. Stark said. “Some of yours are torn.”

The idea of Mark coming into the lab for any reason scared Peter, but not as much as it would have twenty minutes ago, thanks to the painkillers. 

“He almost never comes into the lab, so it might be a while.” Peter lowered his voice. “Honestly though? If you go over and loudly admire the forge and get to work with caminium, he’ll probably give you anything you ask for.” Peter wouldn’t have dared ask for anything, but Mr. Stark was the one that really mattered here. He had way more leverage. “If you ask a camera, it’ll probably get back to him, since they’re being monitored.” Fake Mr. Stark had said Peter wasn’t worth watching anymore, which meant Mark thought that at least a little. But Real Mr. Stark was definitely worth watching. No way was Mark going to miss a single thing that Mr. Stark muttered if he could help it. 

“Off to work then,” Mr. Stark said, knees popping as he stood up.

“Wait!” Peter said, his voice cracking. “Give me a book to read or something to do down here. I need to be working too, or he’ll get mad.” 

Mr. Stark looked like he had something to say about that, but he bit his tongue, instead walking over to the bookshelf and pulling down a random scientific journal.

“Nope, I’ve read that one,” Peter said loudly, the exertion stinging dully. “Try a shelf down.”

Mr. Stark grabbed a new one lower down, holding it up with a questioning eyebrow. 

“Yeah, that’ll do.”

Mr. Stark leaned over to hand it to him on the floor, then wordlessly went over to the forge’s closed door, checking meters and pulling hefty metal implements out from a cupboard. 

Before the accident, Peter would have already pulled the forge’s door wide open to heat the space. He could feel the chill where he was on the floor, even stronger because of his injuries and the painkillers, which always made him a little cold. 

Mr. Stark would probably leave it open if he asked, even if it messed with the temperature regulation or something. 

So Peter wasn’t going to ask. He was bait, he was moral support, he was under direct threat should he mess with Mr. Stark’s use of the forge, so he was going to keep his mouth shut. 

Peter flipped the book open, holding it open on his upper chest with his left hand. He had to strain his neck to see the words on the bottom quarter of the page, but it was better than being stuck on a stool all day. Hopefully Mark would still count this as work and feed him. 

The painkillers had definitely kicked in all the way now, which was a beautiful thing. And a drowsy thing. They made the words blur together a little bit on the page and in his brain, but Mark wouldn’t know the difference. Hopefully. He just had to keep working and not distract Mr. Stark anymore until he could get them out of here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! I'm open to any critiques you have for the scene/story so far, and I'd love to know your favorite line!
> 
> Come chat with me on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	21. Stitches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thought of redoing torn stitches under any circumstances turned Tony’s stomach—pulling out the loose threads of the broken ones had been bad enough—but this wasn’t a time or place for soft stomachs. This was a time and place for plans and confidence and doing what had to be done. Like getting the medical supplies Peter needed from Mark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how I let these chapters get so out of hand. I swear it was supposed to be 5k, then it grew a mind of its own and this 10k monstrosity happened. Enjoy because the next one will definitely (read: probably) not be this long. 
> 
> Warning: Somewhat graphic description of giving someone stitches, in case the title didn't tip you off. Also for threats of violence.

**Day One**

Ten minutes after Tony gave Peter the academic journal to read laying on the floor, the kid fell asleep with it tented over his face. Tony slid it down to his chest to he could breathe easier, then walked straight to one of the cameras in the corner near the forge and away from the kid and whisper-yelled at Mark, telling him that he’d better still feed the kid even if he slept through the morning. He was doing his best. Better than anyone else could be expected to. 

There was no sign if Mark had heard him or not in the following hours, which was infuriating. But when food was delivered through the slit in the door at lunchtime, there were two plates: one with average portion sizes, the other with almost double that. Tony hid the note next to the plates before bringing the over to Peter. 

_One day of charity rations. If he’s not on his feet tomorrow, he doesn’t eat._

Peter had been panicked when he’d woken up, saying something about Mark being upset, but he’d shut up fast when he’d seen the rations. They weren’t the triple-calorie diet Tony had told Mark Peter needed, but Peter kept gushing about how much more it was and how it would be plenty for the foreseeable future. 

He probably rambled about it just to make Tony feel better, but every reminder that Peter had been basically starved for two weeks only made Tony angrier.

He stood up, saying he was going to tell the cameras to bring more food next time because better wasn’t good enough, but the kid had grabbed him and begged him not too. It was painful to see how terrified he was of what Mark might do. 

And of course he was terrified. This was the psycho who’d kidnapped him, tethered him to a wall, then blown his ribs out. Even if Tony was a hundred times angrier at Mark than Peter was, he could still respect Peter’s fear. He promised not to say anything about the rations. For now.

But the kid was so thin, he regretted the promise the second it left his lips. 

There were no mirrors around, so the kid probably didn’t even realize the extent of it, but his sharp collarbones made shadows above his shirt collar where there had been none before. His jaw and elbows were more pronounced. Tony could see the outline of each one of his ribs every time he changed his bandages. Well, every rib he had left. In place of the missing ones was still a ragged, raw wound, poorly stitched and closing slowly. Far too slowly.

**Day Two**

The second day, Tony set Peter up at the table with some tinkering work. Not technically “on his feet” as the note with the food had demanded, but it was the same amount of standing Tony would be doing, so it would be enough. It had to be. The kid couldn’t stand for more than five minutes without starting to sway alarmingly. 

It was enough. Peter’s portion sizes for lunch that day had been almost as big as the day before. 

But still not enough for the kid’s metabolism long-term, no matter how much Peter claimed otherwise. He knew what Helen had said about his dietary requirements.

He also knew what she said about stitches, which was keep them straight, keep them clean. 

Mark had been ignoring Tony’s requests to the cameras for suture supplies. The note the day before implied Mark could hear what he said to them, so it was infuriating not to hear a single word in response about something that was so damn important. The kid’s stitches were falling out left and right. Helen would be appalled. _Tony_ was appalled. 

He couldn’t ask Mark to his face for the supplies because Mark hadn’t come into the lab at all. If Peter was right, they might never see his face again, so Tony might have to get used to being ignored while he worked. Which he would normally be fine with, except for the spider-kid bleeding all over the place in desperate need of new sutures, burn cream, and a new roll of bandages. Even with Tony only changing the bandages on his own forearms once—at Peter’s insistence, of course—the roll wouldn’t last more than another day with how much Peter’s wound required each time they changed them. 

While Peter sat at his stool making notes and checking charts, Tony sat at a table behind him, making notes of his own while silently fuming at Mark. For ignoring the kid’s need for medical attention. For involving Peter at all when it should have been Tony snatched away. For starving the kid, accidentally or not. For tying him down by his ribs, them ripping them out. Tony could almost feel his blood pressure raise whenever he thought about that. Feel a hint of the nausea that swelled up every time he had to look at it to change the bandages. 

He glanced up at the kid, who was now mixing a few chemicals together with a caminium stirring stick. Thirty feet of spiked chain draped down from the kid’s side across the floor and under the roll-up wall to the cell. A sheet of sweat clung to his forehead, and Tony almost offered to let the kid lay down for a bit—like he might in his own lab back home—but he knew the kid would refuse. He’d panicked after sleeping through the first morning, sure Mark would punish them both for it. 

The kid was petrified of Mark, adamant that he had to be up and working or Mark would get mad and that bad things happened when Mark was mad. 

Knowing that fear, Toy was still baffled by the kid’s arguments for not killing Mark the day he’d learned about the rib shackles. In that weird ransom call, Faceless had said Peter would hate it if Tony killed him, and Tony had written it off. But it seemed Faceless was at least a little bit right. How had this guy gotten so far into his head? Peter wasn’t one whose morals were easily swayed or loyalties easily won. What was Tony missing?

He wanted to ask about it, but didn’t want to risk it turning into another yelling match like it had the first day, when Tony had been a complete moron. He still felt bad about that. Tony arguing that they should kill Mark if they got the chance had somehow made Peter think he was a fraud. He really didn’t know what to do with that information. The kid had to know Iron Man had killed bad guys before. On purpose. Without regretting it later.

They’d be having a serious conversation about that one day soon. Idealistic superhero or not, Peter had to realize that sometimes people did things that forfeited their right to live. And sure, you had to be super careful to dole out the judgment when it was just you making the call, but sometimes it still had to be made. Especially if you were the only one who could do something about it. 

But for now he couldn’t afford the spook the kid again. The terror in Peter’s eyes as Tony had advanced to catch him and as he tapped out their code on his arm…well, it hadn’t been Tony’s finest moment. Mark had laid the trap perfectly, conditioning Peter to doubt Tony, and Tony had somehow played right into it. 

He couldn’t let that happen again. The kid had to trust him, had to be able to relax at least a little, feel a little safe. Even if it was all Tony could do for him right now.

Peter hadn’t used their code again since the yelling match, and Tony was counting that as a small win in a stupidly large sea of failures. Failure to protect the kid in the first place. Failure to find him after that. 

Peter interrupted Tony’s self-deprecating river of thought by straightening like he’d been electrocuted, then tilting off the side of his stool with a yelp.

“Kid!”

Tony stood up so fast his own stool fell over backward. He ran over to Peter, who was scrambling along the floor back toward the cell. The wall between the two rooms was still mostly closed, rolled down like one of those security grilles over airports stores you saw when you got home after a red-eye. 

Mark only rolled it up for a few minutes at the start of the work day, when he loosened Peter’s rib shackles to let him into the lab, and at the end of the work day, when he reeled in Peter’s rib shackles like some twisted fishing rod to get him back to the cell.

During the work day, he left a four-inch slit open along the bottom so Peter’s rib shackles could extend, retract, and slide back and forth as he moved around the lab. So Peter hurrying desperately toward the closed door didn’t make much sense…unless…

“It’s retracting, Mr. Stark!” Peter gasped. “It’s reeling me in, but the door’s not open yet!”

And it didn’t look like it was opening any time soon.

Tony sprinted ahead to where the chain was pulling itself under the wall, link by barbed link. He jumped on it with both feet, trying to catch the spikes on the ground and stop it from moving, but the chain ripped through his rubber soles relentlessly as the winch wound Peter further in, unbalancing Tony so he crashed to the ground.

The familiar metallic grinding sound of the chain retracting inch by inch drove Tony to his feet, where he desperately scanned the lab for something, anything that could help. 

He didn’t need to be a genius to know what would happen if the wall didn’t slide up or if the chain wasn’t stopped or broken. Peter would be down another pair of ribs. Slowly this time, which was almost more cruel. He couldn’t think of anything they’d done to make Mark mad enough to do something like this.

Tony lunged for the cabinets by the forge, grabbing the biggest two-handed hammer he could and racing back to the twenty or so feet of chain he still had left to work with. 

Holding it high in the air, he let it swing down, where it glanced off the metal chain a few feet from Peter with a sharp clang. He brought it up again without pausing. 

“Don’t mess with the chain!” Peter yelled. “Mark will get mad!”

Tony brought the hammer down again without hesitation.

“He’s already mad, kid! Now cover your eyes!”

He dropped the hammer down again in a flurry of sparks.

Again. Again. 

Ten feet now.

Spark after spark flew off. Small chips of metal pinged around the room.

Again Again. 

He couldn’t seem to hit the same spot twice. The whole chain was moving, Peter was trying to hide his sobs, crawling forward as slowly as he could without being dragged along by his rib cage. He was clutching at the chain, fingers bleeding on the barbs and spikes, but he didn’t seem to be able to find purchase anywhere.

Again. Again.

Seven feet now.

Tony’s shoulders were burning, chest tightening with the exertion and adrenaline, but he increased his pace. This had to be strong enough to break through the chain. He wasn’t going to let the kid lose another set of ribs to this madman. Not if Tony Stark had anything to say about it. 

His next strike missed the chain completely, cracking a floor tile, but he didn’t pause. 

Again. Again. Again.

And then there was no more chain. 

Peter’s left side was pressed tightly against the door, the chain completely hidden, keeping him laying face down on the ground. 

Tony stood, chest heaving, fingers quivering in their grip around the hammer still poised in the air, unable to look away even when he was sure Peter was about to have a few more bones wrenched from his body.

But it didn’t happen.

The grinding of the winch stopped. 

The door behind him creaked open, and Tony whirled around to see Mark entering the lab, tucking a small remote into the top pocket of the large leather smithing apron he was wearing. 

“Drop the hammer, Stark, or I’ll start it up again.”

The hammer was clanging loudly off the floor before Mark had even finished speaking. Tony kept his hands in the air too, for good measure. If there ever was a time to surrender, this was it. 

Peter’s palms were pressed to the ground, his breaths sporadic and frantic, but he wasn’t screaming in pain, so the chain must have stopped retracting for good.

But the threat was still there. And Tony’s heart was still thundering in his chest like it was trying to break a few ribs getting out. 

“What do you want?” Tony managed, sounding more desperate than he wanted to. 

“Just checking in on your progress,” Mark said, strolling over to Tony’s table and picking up the caminium frame of a small bot he’d been crafting. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

The bot was intended to be a wall crawler that scampered around behind the drywall, targeting and cutting through any cluster of wires it came across. Tony had been thinking about adding a laser so it could cut through water pipes too, just to cause as much facility damage as he could manage. 

The skeleton probably wasn’t enough for Mark to know exactly what it was, but he still slipped it into another pocket of his giant smithing apron. 

“You should have let me know you were coming,” Tony said, dropping his hands to his sides. “I’d have made some tea and biscuits for us all.” And maybe stood by the door with the hammer instead of banging useless on the chain with it.

“That shackle retracting is all the forewarning you’ll ever get,” Mark said. “And I’d suggest you don’t try anything next time, or I’ll let it keep going.”

Try anything to break the chain? Or try anything like his new plan to brain him with a hammer the second he walked in? Probably both. 

“I’ll return this later if it seems promising,” Mark said to Tony’s silence. “Until then, you’d best get started on something else.”

He turned away without waiting to see what Tony thought of his advice, and Tony realized this was the first chance he’d had so far to ask Mark the questions he’d been avoiding over the cameras. 

“Fine with me,” Tony said to Mark’s retreating back. “How about I get started fixing the kid’s ripped stitches? All I need is a suture kit and some more bandages.”

“I heard your request yesterday, Stark,” Mark said dismissively. “Make me something worth trading them for, and I’ll consider it.”

What, the frame of a conduit-targeting, wall-crawling robot made out of this guy’s specialty metal wasn’t worth a needle and some thread? Time for a Plan B then. What would Mark take as a trade? 

It was obvious he was obsessed with Tony and his work, especially the arc reactor and the Iron Man technology based on the bogus blueprints Mark had set the lab up with. Tony had to play those inventions close to his chest. He couldn’t just give Mark specs or prototypes for those without making the world an exponentially more dangerous place.

Or could he?

Maybe he could give him pieces of it. Harmless pieces that looked flashy or useful but would be useless without the central mechanisms. Pieces that used caminium and maybe would make Mark excited enough to hand over a few medical supplies. 

Next to him, Peter took a deep shaky breath and rolled away from the wall onto his back, dropping a hand to his chest and coughing. Apparently Mark had loosened the chain again.

“I can’t believe that’s all he wanted,” he panted.

“He’s quite the drama queen,” Tony agreed, offering Peter a hand up. “My weak heart can’t take his dramatics.”

“Yeah, my ribs can’t either.”

He cringed at the sad attempt at a joke as he helped Peter stand with an arm at his elbow. 

“Not funny, kid.”

“Come on,” the kid almost begged. “It’s a little funny.”

“Maybe in ten years when this is all a distant memory.” He doubted he’d ever be able to rib the kid about this, doubted he’d ever be able to use the phrase “ribbing someone” ever again without thinking of this place.

“Thinking things are funny can be a middle finger, Mr. Stark,” Peter said, harking back to that first day’s conversation and then throwing Tony’s own words back in his face: “My choice.”

Well, the kid wasn’t wrong. But there were some definite cons to endless gallows humor, which Tony knew all about. But any middle finger had cons, so gallows humor was as good as the next thing. 

“Yeah, I guess so.” Guess it was time he found out what it was like from the other end and hearing someone else make those jokes. 

The kid actually smiled at his agreement. Nearly beamed at the idea of finding something to do that Tony approved of. 

Tony walked Peter back to his stool, then moved back to his own station, looking at the scraps around him. Time to try the next plan while crawler bot was being held captive by Mark. 

What he wouldn’t give for his own lab and tech. He missed his holotables. He missed DUM-E’s stupid shenanigans. He missed F.R.I.D.A.Y. being able to look things up and run simulations with the vaguest of requests. How did anyone get anything important done without first designing an A.I. to run the boring parts? 

He even missed the easy back-and-forth project ping-pong he and Peter usually had going in the lab, but the kid had been strangely reluctant. Okay, maybe it wasn’t strange given the current circumstances, but it still felt wrong. And a little annoying. 

Peter didn’t seem to want to talk about his project at all when Tony showed an interest. He just hid his notes, redirected, and kept telling Tony how damn much Mark loved his stupid caminium and wanted something from that. He knew chemistry was the kid’s specialty, but it’s wasn’t like Tony was a chemistry caveman. And the kid couldn’t be half bad as the properties of metal alloys either. He’d always been good with the limitations and properties of the alloys on the Iron Man suits Tony had let him mess around with. Why was he working so hard to keep their project separate?

There wasn’t much complicated or special about the metal anyway. Everything Mark supplied had a high percentage of metallic and non-metallic inclusions scattered throughout it. So high that Tony was surprised it wasn’t an incredibly brittle material. They were so consistent they had to be part of the metal’s design. A particularly conspicuous organic inclusion—one that shared similarities with rubber—seemed like the linchpin to Tony. That probably held the whole thing together even when regular laws of metallurgy and force should cause the metal to fracture under intense pressure.

Not that it changed the properties of the metal all that much, to be honest. It just meant that something that looked broken actually worked, which was an interesting feat if you were into that sort of thing, but ultimately not very influential in the greater world of inventing. Sure, this metal was notably Mark’s, but there wasn’t any reason to use it above carbon steel that Tony could see. 

But Peter wanted no part of it, and apparently wanted Tony to have no part in his project. Was he embarrassed? Self-conscious? Weirdly territorial over his own inventions like he’d been at first with the webshooters? He hadn’t seen that from Peter in a long time. 

Whatever it was, it left Peter across the room playing with chemical equations and Tony in the corner smelting metal. And that would have to be good enough for now. Time for them both to get to work again. 

**Day Three**

First thing in the morning, Mark had pulled the stupid reel-Peter-in-by-his-ribs-without-warning stunt again. They’d only been at their stations for fifteen minutes, barely time for the forge to come to temperature and Tony to grab his first cup of coffee, when Peter yelled “Hey!” then stood up and started walking shakily over to the wall as the winch’s grinding started up again. 

Tony hadn’t freaked out this time, merely helping the kid kneel down and assume the position face down on the floor, his chained side pressed against the crack under the wall.

While they waited for the god-awful churning sound of the winch to stop, Tony couldn’t stop his heart from racing or the thought that maybe Mark wouldn’t stop this time. Who could predict what he might do? He was insane. 

He’d said as much last night and Peter had disagreed, propping up Mark’s garbage propaganda as if it made any sense. Tony had only raised his voice once before giving up and changing the subject. He couldn’t talk about it while being calm anymore. 

The kid was still, somehow, inconceivably, giving Mark the benefit of the doubt. He latched onto any evidence he could find that Mark’s violence or cruelty was a result of ignorance or of a consistent, albeit twisted, logical process. 

And once Peter had all but implied that of course, naturally, obviously Mark would think he deserved rib shackles because he’d escaped the handcuffs, Tony had lost it for a minute. He’d shut the conversation down so he didn’t go ballistic again, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. About Peter’s desperation to make sense of Mark’s actions.

It was like he thought a sob story could explain all of this away. Sure, maybe the low-level drug dealers and desperate criminals on the streets of Queens had tragic backstories like being forced into gang life or needing medicine for a sick kid or whatever, but one didn’t kidnap superheroes unprovoked—kidnap anyone—without having deep-seated psychological problems that were too dangerous to let lie in society, even in its seedy underbelly. 

But that was a discussion for another day. A day when Mark wasn’t looming over their every word through the dozens of cameras around the lab. A day when Tony could have Rhodey or Pepper or Mayor somebody else there to back him up and talk in a way that the kid would understand. 

Peter didn’t look up from the floor as Mark walked in, dropped the wall-crawler bot on Tony’s table, and walked back out without a word. 

Twenty minutes after that, Peter was asleep with his hands on his head sitting at his lab table and Tony had gotten the wall-crawler bot into the same condition it had been in when Mark had taken it.

The kid dozed three hours of the morning away as Tony slaved away on Plan B. The kid was pretty clearly spent, and the painkillers Tony gave him each morning to help him through the work day in the lab made him even more tired. He didn’t have the heart to wake the kid up now, not when a nightmare had kept him up last night and his body still so clearly needed the rest. 

With the kid still sleeping silently, he grabbed his new project, walking over to a camera by the forge. Time to trade for those suture supplies. 

Tony had finally accepted that morning that his meddling with the helicopter while turning himself in hadn’t worked out. At all. No one had received any signals he’d tried to send out. No one had tracked his subcutaneous trackers before they’d been taken out. No one. Because if anyone had known, someone would have blown the lid off this place days ago. 

Some small part of him had been expecting a rescue crew, shadowed by Helen Cho, to swoop in and save the day, but that was looking more and more like a pipe dream. They were likely to be here a while yet. Tony would owe an apology bigger than a two-story stuffed rabbit to Pepper when he got back for taking so long. And until then…he had a pretty badly hurt spider-kid to take care of. 

The burns on Peter’s neck and arms had mostly healed. At least they’d closed up, leaving rivers of shiny, rippled skin that were still trying to heal over scarless. The kid was getting better at standing up and sitting down on his own, but he still sometimes needed Tony’s help. 

At least the kid wasn’t trying to hide things anymore, except maybe how much pain he had to be in. He let Mr. Stark inspect his wounds every morning and night to change the bandages. 

Not that he could do anything else that might actually be useful besides give him the painkillers. 

Tony had bet that changing the bandages more often early on was more important than rationing them; he’d seen in Afghanistan what infected wounds looked like. 

Peter’s wound didn’t look quite like that yet, but it just wasn’t…right. Tony couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. The side with the chain coming out of it had pretty much healed around the metal—which was still disturbing on a whole different level—but at least it wasn’t an infection risk. 

But his right side with the missing ribs? It had to be missing a good amount of muscle and skin too because it was a bloody mess that just wouldn’t close. Even after healing for three days, it was still too deep, too open. The doctors had tried to close it with sutures the first day, but it had been too soon because none of the stitches had held stretched out over the chasm as they were. 

And Tony still didn’t have suture supplies. The bandages had run out that morning. The bottle of painkillers was at least a third of the way gone already. 

The thought of redoing torn stitches under any circumstances turned Tony’s stomach—pulling out the loose threads of the broken ones had been bad enough—but this wasn’t a time or place for soft stomachs. This was a time and place for plans and confidence and doing what had to be done. Like getting the medical supplies Peter needed from Mark. 

Tony held up his newly finished caminium arc reactor casing in front of the camera. 

It didn’t have any of the revolutionary tech inside it. Mark had wanted him to use the metal, and that only really applied to the outer casing anyway. So he’d made a prototype out of caminium, subtly changing a few of the measurements to cause problems if the functioning tech were to be added later, adding an extra crossbeam that would block connectors, that sort of thing.

Mark would probably be too excited by his shiny metal to notice. And even if he did, there was a pretty good chance he wouldn’t understand what Tony had done anyway. Probably. Tony gave himself a 70% chance on his deception succeeding. 

He spoke clearly to the camera, but not loud enough to wake Peter behind him. 

“This caminium arc reactor casing seems worth a roll of bandages, a suture kit, and some antibiotics, doesn’t it? That’s my offer. You know where to find me.”

Seven minutes later, the door that led into the hallway creaked open and Mark stepped in quietly. Almost like he was trying not to wake the kid, which was odd since he’d shown no compunction starving him or terrorizing him or ripping bones out.

At least he hadn’t tried that rib-retracting trick when the kid was asleep. But Tony should have assumed he would and woken the kid up beforehand. He wouldn’t be taking that risk again. 

Mark approached and stared Tony down as he dropped a metal tray of food on Tony’s lab table, where it landed unevenly on the tools and hardware. Tony grabbed it to stop the whole thing from sliding off onto the floor and studied the contents with a sinking heart.

One plate was piled with his usual rations, but the other plate carried only a new roll of bandages, a rube of antibiotic cream, and a small metal case—presumably suture supplies. He’d gotten the medicine, but not the food. 

“Food that hard to come by these days?” He asked, not hiding his bitterness. “I hear delivery apps are pretty damn reliable these days.”

“I told you. He doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat.”

That rule was getting old fast. 

“He’s still recovering,” Tony hissed under his breath.

“And he can keep doing that while he works.”

Tony glared, but didn’t push it as Mark turned heel and walked out. The kid was convinced if Tony pushed Mark any more on the food thing, nothing good would come of it. But nothing good was coming now.

He’d wake up the kid next time so Mark would feed him. Food was more important than another few hours of sleep when recovering, right? Maybe? He should have asked Helen about it on that last desperate phone call, but he’d never thought he’d have to make such a terrible, stupid, should-be-easily-avoidable choice. 

Today the choice had already been made, but it made the next choice an easy one.

He grabbed the plate with food and walked over to Peter’s lab table, shaking his shoulder to wake him. 

He shot straight up in his chair, immediately wincing, then looking around in terror.

“Just me, kid,” Mr. Stark said, clearing a space on the table and setting the plate down. “It’s lunchtime.”

“Oh man! I fell asleep, didn’t I? You’ve got to wake me up next time! He’ll be mad!” 

He hadn’t been mad though. He’d just enacted the consequences he’d threatened with almost no emotion. Was that better or worse than being angry? 

Tony voiced none of that though. Instead he said, “Uh, pretty sure I did just wake you up.”

“Yeah,” Peter almost whined, “but it’s been hours!”

“Bemoan your excess beauty sleep later, kid,” Tony said, trying to sound as casual and distracted as possible. “I ate mine while working, so this is yours.”

He wandered away as Peter dug into the plate with a relish that made Tony’s grumbling stomach a little quieter. He needed it more. 

The kid polished his plate in under five minutes, not commenting on the smaller portion size, which irked Tony. He wasn’t even going to comment sarcastically on the change? He was just going to take it lying down?

Brushing the thought from his mind as Peter finished eating, Tony held up the new supplies. “Look what I got us this morning,” he said. 

Peter’s eyes brightened. “Awesome! Now we can change your bandages again. We should definitely use some of the cream.”

Tony stopped himself from rolling his eyes. This kid’s lack of either self-preservation or self-awareness was off the charts. Or he’d just never heard of triage before. 

“Fine,” Tony said. “But only after we take care of you.” Going through Peter’s plan was going to be a thousand times easier than trying to push around it, and a red oozing cuts on one of Tony’s arms could probably use that cream stuff anyway, not that Peter would know that. 

“Deal,” Peter said as Tony grabbed both plates and the tray and put them by the door where someone could reach through the slit near the bottom and pull them out. “What’d you have to do to get these?”

“I made an arc reactor casing out of caminium.”

“Oh.” The kid looked crestfallen, which was the opposite of how he should be looking. They’d finally gotten that suture kit for goodness’ sake. Did he think Tony was selling out or something? Actually giving Mark dangerous tech?

“Don’t look so sad, kid. It’s miles from the real deal without the core.”

“No, I know,” Peter said. “It just that…one time Mark told me if I gave him that, he’d let me walk away…even if I couldn’t escape on my own. All he wanted was that.”

Tony’s heart sank. Had he severely undersold his own bogus tech? Or was that offer not on the table anymore since Tony was here too? Maybe the kid was just feeling bad because he’d tried to make one and couldn’t. Or hadn’t wanted to try because it would somehow be betraying Tony.

“You could have done it, kid. I would have understood. Obviously. Since I just did it.”

“I don’t know how anyway. I just wish…maybe we could have gotten more for it.”

“Maybe,” Tony said, “but be being here changes all the rules anyway, so I doubt it would have worked the same.”

They moved to a table on the side of the room where they’d set up a makeshift medical station for changing Peter’s bandages. Everything stayed at the table except for Peter’s painkillers, which Tony kept in one of his jumpsuit pockets. No way was he letting them out of his sight for Mark to grab when he came and rifled around in the lab during the night. 

The bandages were gone, so the only thing on the table now was a small pile of a half-dozen used needles from the pack Tony had grabbed while running out of the Tower. He’d started saving them to sterilize and reuse later once he’d realized they were going to run out of those before running out of painkillers. 

As soon as Tony pulled the bottle from his pocket and set it on the table, Peter slowly pushed it away with a single finger. 

“We should save them for something more important.”

What else did the kid think was going to happen? Tony was all about saving scarce items for a rainy day, but it was pouring right now, and Tony wasn’t about to ignore that. 

“You’re due for another dose anyway,” he said, pulling the usual dose into a needle without waiting for Peter to agree. Actually, a little more than usual, given the impending stitches about to happen. 

He shot them into the kid’s shoulder and leaned back and waited for them to kick in, only thinking then if he’d done this before lunch, they could have avoided this whole awkward-silence, waiting bit. 

But Peter didn’t leave things silent for long.

“Did you really send the other painkillers from before?” He spoke so fast that Tony had to play it back in his head a few times before understanding. The painkillers on the drone? That felt like a million years ago. Tony had completely forgotten about that with everything that had happened. How long had the kid been worrying about it?

“Yeah, I did,” Tony said, knowing he owed the kid some explanation for why he’d appeared to be working with the bad guys, even in a small way. “I don’t know what Mark told you, but he sent me some bullshit business memo about helping you because they didn’t have meds that would work on you. He offered to let me send some over on a drone that showed up on my front porch. Helen and I decided the risks of not sending them were worse than the risks of sending them.”

Peter seemed to chew on that for a minute. “Oh…he said something like that…send some lame card…but I wasn’t sure…” He still seemed bothered by something.

“I thought about trying to track the drone,” Tony offered, “but I couldn’t risk it.” Maybe more explanation was too heavy, but Peter had to understand why Tony had done something so dangerous. And if Peter understood and said so, maybe Tony would stop feeling so terrible about it. “Last I knew, you were dying, and I couldn’t just leave you without anything. Then they said they would go ahead with their plans with or without painkillers and said they’d self-destruct the drone and not give me another chance to help if they saw anything fishy, so I just panicked and did what they asked.”

Peter nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything. 

Maybe Peter didn’t want to talk about it, but Tony had to know.

“It was for the first rib shackles, wasn’t it? Or did they have to do another one of those throat cuts so you could breathe?”

The question snapped Peter out of his thoughts. “What? No, they had an antidote. It made me puke my guts up, but I could breathe again, so I guess it was worth it. And yeah, the painkillers were just for the rib thing. They had some sort of drug that made me all weak and weird, but it wasn’t the same as Cho’s meds.” He swallowed. “They probably would have done it with just those drugs if you hadn’t sent anything, so thanks.”

“Maybe he was bluffing,” Tony countered. “Maybe if I hadn’t sent those, he never would have gone this far.” Why couldn’t he just accept the kid’s seal of approval and move on? Why did some part of him want Peter to say he’d made a stupid mistake and should have tried tracking him the second he had the chance. 

“Mark doesn’t need to bluff,” Peter said firmly but easily. Then, more strained, “And trust me, they’d have done it either way. They…when they stitched me back up after the explosion, I remember starting to wake up. The doctors were freaking out, but they pushed through and put the new set in anyway. They just rushed to finish everything.”

Maybe it was a good thing only Peter had gotten lunch, because Tony was feeling about ready to hurl even on an empty stomach. He knew what that was like. Waking up screaming in a surgery, doctors around you not explaining anything. Those screams not stopping anyone as they cut. He closed his eyes, struggling to take deep breaths.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter’s worried voice, dragged him out of his panic a few inches. 

“Well, they sure did a bang-up job of it, stitches falling out left and right,” he said bitterly. Anger would save him. Save him from the dark hole of his memories. He was trying to show Peter that people moved past shit like that—like _this_—not that it followed them around for ten years. 

“It’s better than them taking their time and then being really awake for it, right?” 

What a terrible question for a child to ask. Which was better: a well-done surgery while you were awake or a botched surgery while you were unconscious? What a stupid world they lived in where that questioned had occurred in all seriousness to two separate superheroes in different circumstances. And one of them a child. Like either of those options could ever be better. 

“Yeah, better until a half-assed job leaves leftover shrapnel or a back door for an infection that kills you a week later.”

He opened his eyes at Peter’s silence, and his anger immediately cooled. He’d gone too far. The kid looked like he might start crying. Time to reel things back in, however he could, if he even could. It wasn’t like either of them had said anything that wasn’t true. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Tony said. “It’s just…memories. Don’t mind me.”

Peter’s response was quiet, cautious. “I only meant that I’m pretty sure they’re out of painkillers now, so what you have is everything.”

Of course it was everything. That was why Tony never took them off his person. 

“Nothing else is going to happen, kid,” Tony promised. “I won’t let it.”

“Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”

“Not very often,” Tony said, rambling to ignore the terrifying truth holding up that statement. “Plus I’ve never been as motivated as I am right now. I’m pretty sure Michelle would shoot me on sight if I return you in any more pieces.”

Ooh, now there was another apology Tony hadn’t thought about. He’d promised Michelle he’s call her the minute he knew something, but he hadn’t spoken to her after she’d left the Tower. She’d missed the painkiller drone deal. And now the video call and Tony turning himself in. 

The specter of their next meeting just kept getting worse and worse. Maybe that was the one upside to this place, that Michelle couldn’t get to him yet. But she’d get to him eventually. Maybe he could use Peter as a human shield. 

“Michelle?” Peter’s voice cracked tellingly. “You mean MJ?”

Wasn’t this kid just so optimistic to assume Tony was already friends with his angry maybe-girlfriend. 

“Yes, but she informed me that only her friends are allowed to call her that.”

Peter actually winced, like he knew exactly how Tony felt being on the receiving end of her ire. 

“Sorry, she’s a little…well, I don’t know what she is.” He looked legitimately confused, and Tony would have laughed out loud if he wasn’t only half sure he didn’t have the same look of confusion on his own face. 

“Proof that the next generation is either going to save the world or burn it?” Mr. Stark muttered.

“Yeah, that’s her.” Peter laughed quietly, then turned serious. “Thanks for saving her. I never got to tell you before, but thanks. I can’t believe she got dragged into all this.”

“She wasn’t in it for very long,” Tony said. “She’d basically dragged herself out by the time I arrived. You don’t need to worry about her as much as you probably do. Like I said. Burn the world.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty amazing.”

“Well, heads up, Ms. Amazing has an appointment to ream me out for involving you when we get back. She made sure to tell me you’re invited too, so bring popcorn. It’ll be a roasting for the ages, I’m sure.”

“She’ll chill out once we’re back safe,” Peter said. “Wait, does she know about Spider-Man?”

He sounded curious, not freaked out like he usually was about his identity. Interesting.

“Nah,” Tony said. “She thought I’d shoved you into some top-secret government crap.”

“I mean, you sort of did with the Accords.”

“And that’s enough of that. I don’t need two teenagers rubbing my worst mistakes in my face.”

The kid’s face fell. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tony said. “Just that I should have kept you closer to the ground a little longer. Not thrown you in the deep end. Kept you away from stuff like this.”

“Yeah, maybe” Peter said, shrugging with his left shoulder. Tony didn’t know if it still hurt too much to move his right shoulder or if it was just habit by this point. “I think the meds have kicked in,” Peter said. 

“Good, let’s see what we’re working with today,” Tony said, even though he’d seen the wound just a few hours ago and knew what they were working with. Maybe the food had caught up with the kid and he’d miraculously healed during his nap. 

He peeled back a corner of the bandage. Nope. No miracles. Fine. They’d just have to do this the hard way. 

He dabbed some antibiotic cream over the wound with a clean bandage, then reached for the surprisingly intimidating metal tin. 

“Have you ever done stitches before?” Peter asked, looking very unsure of everything. 

“Sure,” Tony said. “Piece of cake.”

Piece of banana actually. Because a banana skin was the only thing he’d ever put sutures in himself before. It had been some lame, team-building activity Cap had arranged, probably pushed by Sam, who claimed that banana skins could take roughly the same amount of pressure as human skin before tearing. 

It had seemed stupid at the time (which Tony had definitely told Cap at the time), and Tony had not been the star of the class. He’d done it good enough to be allowed to leave then headed straight to his lab to start developing a medical suture spray so he’d never have to figure out if Cap was right firsthand about bananas. 

And yet here he was, completely techless, about to find out anyway. 

He opened the case, revealing some tiny rolls of thread and various curved needles, pliers, and scissors. Peter made a face of disgust and looked to his left, fiddling with something on the table. 

Mr. Stark quietly unfolded a little sheet of paper that had been tucked in the case. There were no words on it, just tiny diagrams of which tools held needles and which tools held skin. 

It was like a morbid version of those damn Ikea catalogs SI designers were always raving about when they proposed using only pictures in assembly instructions for SI products. Tony shot them down whenever he could. What the hell was he paying all those technical writers for it everyone just wanted to use hieroglyphics? 

This paper with the suture kit just proved his point. While being visually reminded which tool did what was minorly helpful, he much rather would have had six paragraphs of size 6 font giving him detailed instructions and warnings, graphic designers around the world be damned. 

“Oh my god!” Peter’s voice was an entire octave higher than usual. “Are you reading the instructions?! I though you said you knew how to do this!”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Tony said defensively. “Would you rather I threw these out the window, forewent the refresher course, and just started stabbing you?”

“I wish you were confident enough in your stitching ability to do that, yeah,” the kid muttered. 

Well, he wasn’t the only one.

“If wishes were horses, kid,” he said pulling out the biggest semi-circle needle and the needliest-nosed pair of pliers to clamp it with. 

“Wait. I thought it was ‘if wishes were fishes.’”

“What? How would you end that to make any sense?” Tony asked as he threaded the needle.

“But yours didn’t end either!”

“Yeah, because it was _implied_. General knowledge and all that. ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.’”

He laid out the other tools he’d need as Peter sputtered.

“But…what…what does that even mean?” 

Those painkillers had to be hitting the kid pretty hard, so he’d humor him. 

“It means don’t count on wishes, because wishes alone don’t get most people very far. Well, at least that’s what mine means. Yours about the fishes is still nonsense. Now, wishes aside, I’m going to get started, so look away if you want.”

“I still wish you were a doctor,” Peter said as he looked to his left again.

“Technically I am,” Tony said, knowing exactly what the kid meant.

“Like, a doctor doctor. A medical one. With needles.”

“You know what they say. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“No one says that. And what’s with you and beggar metaphors?”

“Ask society, kid. I’m not in charge of making up archaic idioms.”

Peter glanced down to the instructions again as Tony braced himself for the first puncture.

“It’s not much of a refresher course if it’s just these stupid pictures. Why not put words too?”

“Exactly, kid. Exactly.”

He thought back to what Helen had said. Keep them small. Keep them straight. 

The first stitch was decent. The next one, maybe too close for comfort.

The kid still wasn’t watching, which was fine with Tony, although his jaw clenched reflexively every time the needle went through. 

Tony’s own jaw was aching, and he realized he’d been clenching his own teeth trying to push through the uncomfortable task. His foot was tapping anxiously against the floor, and his hands were shaking hard enough he couldn’t get the needle where he needed for the third stitch. 

He had to calm down or this was going to take all afternoon and be anything but straight. How did anyone have steady enough hands in a situation like this?

“How did Yinsen do this?” he muttered to himself. He’d had steady hands even when the stakes were much higher. Must have been pure training. Or not caring as much if his patient was hurting. Maybe even if they lived or died. 

“Who’s Yinsen?”

Curse that kid’s super hearing. This was not a conversation he wanted to have right now. Too many old memories. Too many similarities. Definitely wouldn’t help him calm down.

“An old friend.”

“Did he teach you how to do stitches?”

“Nope, but he had to stitch me up once. Saved my life.”

Tony still hadn’t attempted another stitch, opting instead for relatively deep breaths to try and calm himself. Actually, thinking about Yinsen’s calm voice and presence after the surgery instead of focusing on the event was helping too.

“Oh,” Peter said thoughtfully. “You know, Ned tried to give me stitches once. But he passed out after, like, a minute.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

Tony finally put the fourth stitch in. A little straighter than the last one. 

He forced himself to keep going as the kid kept talking. He was probably trying to distract himself, so Tony stopping the stitches every time he talked was counterproductive. 

“So what did you need stitches for?”

“Well, not just stitches per se,” Tony said as casually as he could manage while tying off the fifth stitch. “He was the surgeon who put the electro-magnet in my chest.”

Peter’s back stiffened under his hands.

“In Afghanistan?”

“The one and only,” Tony said. “Mark’s not the only superhero kidnapper with a penchant for experimental surgeries.” 

The sixth stitch went in during the silence. He was starting to get the hang of this. 

“You weren’t a superhero when you got kidnapped then though, so they were kind of just regular kidnappers.”

“Tomayto, tomahto,” Tony said.

Seventh stitch. 

“But, Yinsen was your friend?” He was sounding hesitant now. “Even though he kidnapped you?”

That was an idea he needed to get out of the kid’s head. You never became friends with kidnappers, even if they seemed like decent people in other ways. 

“No, he didn’t kidnap me. They were forcing him to work for them, just like me. He was their doctor for me. And he was a translator since I didn’t speak the language. Got me the tools and equipment I needed. Saved me that way a few times. And he helped me make the armor too.”

“Sounds like a pretty good lab partner.”

“A damn good one, all things considered,” Tony agreed. “Steadiest hands I’ve ever seen.”

His own hands had grown pretty steady. He was on stitch eleven without even really having thought about it. Probably ten or so more to go. Before he got to the deep part that stitches wouldn’t stretch across that he’d probably have to leave open. 

“Did he escape with you?”

Silence would give the kid all the answer he needed, but Tony felt like he deserved more. Not many people knew anything at all about Yinsen, but Peter should know. He had to understand living with that sacrifice. Just in case.

“No. But he’s the reason I escaped. We were out of time and he bought us more. Cost him too much though.”

“Anything can be a cost,” Peter said, echoing Tony’s words from a few days ago. He’d argued then that Tony would be willing to let Peter die given the right circumstances, but now he looked like he was realizing the gravity of that statement. It was nice to see the kid start to internalize something. 

“Yep.” Anything could be a cost and anything could cost too much. 

Stitches twelve through sixteen were in, looking more and more uniform as they progressed. 

“I’m sorry.”

Tony was too. Yinsen dying wasn’t one of his great regrets because there’d been nothing he could have done differently. He’d tried to stop him, but he’d already been hooked up in the immobilized suit and Yinsen hadn’t listened. He couldn’t regret what he couldn’t have changed.

But it was a mercy he wished life had afforded him. Life didn’t owe him anything, wouldn’t owe him anything good if that was how things worked anyway, but he wished some accident, some crossing of the stars, had let Yinsen live. They’d have been great together. 

“I’m sorry too,” Tony said. “He’d have liked to meet you. He’d have liked a lot of things. A friend like that would have kept me from doing a stupid thing or two in my life.” The depth of that hopeless wish struck Tony hard. “God, I wish he could have seen how it all turned out. There’s a lot I’d show him. A lot I’d say.” A lot he’d never be able to. 

“What would you say?” Peter whispered, then shook his head like he’d only then realized what he was asking. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that. It’s out of line. It’s just…sometimes, I think of what I’d tell Ben if he were still around. It’s not really the same though. You don’t have to answer.”

Well, now he felt like he had to. He didn’t know exactly what happened to the kid’s uncle, but based on what he’d yelled that first day about the bad thing happening because he did nothing, he could make a guess. Ben had died, and Peter thought for some reason he should have been able to stop it.

And it wasn’t really the same. Tony knew he couldn’t have saved Yinsen, but thinking about people long gone and wishing that they weren’t? That was universal. 

“It’s fine,” Tony said. “I guess I’d tell him I don’t have nothing anymore. I’d tell him I didn’t waste it. Maybe even that I get why he did what he did even though I hate it and told him not to. I’d tell him thanks even though it feels cheap.”

Peter looked a little confused, but that was fine. He wouldn’t get the details. 

Tony tied off stitch number twenty-two, surveying his work with satisfaction. Not as clean as Helen’s but a mile better than they had been. The wound was pulled tightly closed except for a deep raw patch about an inch long that wouldn’t close up. Maybe after a few days of healing, he’d add some more. 

“There. Should be good as new in a week. Let me wrap it up again and then you can change mine.”

“I’m sorry you’re kidnapped again,” Peter whispered. The “because of me” at the end was so clearly implied it may as well have been said out loud.

“Eh, it’s not so bad,” Tony joked as he put the suture supplies back in the case. “At least everyone speaks English this time. Death threats just aren’t the same if you need a translator. Other things are different too. I didn’t think I’d ever be doing Yinsen’s job though, that’s for sure.”

He wrapped and taped up Peter’s side as he thought. For all the bragging Mark had done about making this a second Afghanistan, there was precious little to remind him of it, except for Peter’s injury and the fact of their captivity. No water boarding. No foreign languages floating above his head. No frigid cave or mush for meals. No archaic implements to work with. 

If Mark truly wanted this to be like Afghanistan, he was either very misinformed or not trying very hard. Or Tony was missing something.

When Tony finished, Peter reached for his forearms and started unwrapping the old bandages there. “This is different from Afghanistan for other reasons, too,” Peter said quietly. “Mark wants it to be Afghanistan all over again, but it’s not.”

Could the kid read his thoughts? Or had he taken that thought from Tony’s joke about incomprehensible death threats? Why did he think Tony needed to be told that?

“I know that, kid.”

“It’s just that…it feels like…I’m just saying…” He was stuttering so bad, Tony was starting to get concerned he’d given him too many painkillers and was going to pass out. But the kid finished firmly. “One of us doesn’t have to be Yinsen. This story is going to end differently.”

“I sure hope so,” was all Tony could get out, but it wasn’t enough for Peter.

“No. That’s not good enough.” His grip on Tony’s forearms tightened. “Don’t just hope. It’s a choice. You basically told me not to be Yinsen the other day and pay that cost. You can’t do that either. Don’t be Yinsen.”

Tony was shocked. He was being unusually forward, not backing down at all. And unusually perceptive. Tony couldn’t say he hadn’t thought of paying that cost himself. Especially if it were a choice between him or the kid. But he definitely hadn’t said anything about that. 

“Where’s this coming from?”

“You said you were doing his job.”

Oh. A classic misunderstanding had somehow put Peter on the right scent. 

“Yep. Stitching up another captive,” Tony said, nodding toward the metal suture tin. “And asking Mark for things like medical supplies, so I’m kind of like a translator too. That’s all I meant.”

“Oh, I just thought…never mind.”

He still looked worried but also a little perplexed as he relaxed his grip on Tony's arms and started spreading antibiotic ointment over the tiny surgical cuts there. 

Tony thought he should console the kid, make the promise he obviously wanted him to make, but he didn’t think he could lie so brazenly. He didn’t know what he’d do given the opportunity.

“Actually,” Peter broke the awkward silence that had fallen, “I do need you to ask Mark something.”

Tony grinned, glad to be on a different subject. Any subject. 

“See? Us translator-doctor types are damn useful. What can I get you?”

“I need to see all the lab footage he’s got from the explosion.”

Any subject but that. Why did the kid want to see that?

“What the hell do you need that for? If this is some kind of exposure therapy thing, it’s a bad idea. It’s too soon. And too intense.”

“Exposure what? No! No, I just can’t remember what was on the table when Mark knocked it over. I need to figure out exactly what he messed up so I can avoid that.”

He didn’t need that footage to know how to not blow up a lab. 

“Don’t be a raging psychopath and smash up the lab. Easy. Done.”

“I need to know what worked too though,” Peter said firmly. “Some of the things he mixed together were close to the reaction I’d been trying to replicate, but I don’t know what fell where. I can control it. I’ll be safe. I was being safe. It was just Mark who screwed things up. I’d been trying to recreate a corrosive acid I accidentally made once in chemistry class.”

“Only you, kid,” Tony muttered. But he believed the kid. No one was more careful in a lab. 

“Mark’s mess is the closest I ever got. Closest he got? Whatever,” Peter rambled, looking frustrated. “I just need to see what he did. Him being reckless solved a problem I was too stupid to solve myself, so I need to see what he did, even if that’s stealing his ideas or whatever. I’m not smart enough to figure it out on my own, so I need that footage to study.”

He was being way too hard on himself. “He knocked some beakers over, kid. That’s not even an idea you can steal, it’s an accident. It’s anybody’s game.”

“An accident that got further than I did,” Peter said bitterly. “I told you I shouldn’t have been on that patent with you. I don’t deserve it.”

Okay now, that wasn’t going to fly. This had absolutely zero to do with Peter’s patent insecurities, and if Mark had been preying on those, he had another thing coming. 

“That aerosol patent was mostly your work!” Tony said, pointing furiously with a finger even though it ripped his arm away from where Peter was wrapping bandages over his forearm. He didn’t want to be angry, but if he heard Peter put himself down on account of Mark saying stupid shit one more time, he was going to lose it. “The final product wouldn’t have been the same without you. The only reason I wish your name wasn’t on that damn patent is because then you wouldn’t have gotten poisoned at that ridiculous party for us, and then it would just be me stuck here instead of the both of us!” He took a deep breath, trying to calm down, trying not to freak the kid out again. “Besides, sheer coincidence and complete accidents are two of the pillars of scientific advances. Like Newton’s apple or Archimedes’ bath.”

“Or microwaves,” Peter volunteered gently. He reached for Tony’s arm again, and he let him finish rewrapping it. 

“Yes! Like microwaves reheating food! Your hot-pocket devouring generation probably wouldn’t have survived without an accident. So don’t give profiting from Mark’s a second thought.”

“No one eats hot pockets anymore,” Peter said, taping the end of the bandage down. He started wrapping the second one immediately. 

“Whatever,” Tony said, glad Peter didn’t seem any more traumatized by his outburst. “I’ll ask Mark, well, ask the cameras later for the footage. We can scour it together.”

“No!” Peter yelled, almost frantically.

Geez, what now? Couldn’t this kid just accept a half-baked plan without shooting it down or blowing a gasket?

“What? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, “just, you have to promise me that if he gives it to us, you won’t watch it.”

“Come again?” Did the kid think Tony was going to slow him down? He was no prize-winning chemist, but surely he could keep up with a fifteen year old. 

“I’ll need to watch it and zoom in and stuff,” Peter continued, “to figure out what chemicals fell where and what got mixed. Probably from several different angles. It’ll be awful and I’ll just make you mad again.”

“Kid—”

“Will seeing that help you with your work at all?” Peter asked directly. “Do you know what I was working on and what I’m trying to figure out? Will you be able to stand watching that? Will seeing if help you treat me any better?” 

No on all accounts. It would distract him from his work with caminium, Peter would have to take an hour to get him up to speed, he’d hate watching every second of the origins of Peter’s injury, and it wouldn’t help him tend it any better. 

But it wasn’t the sort of thing you let a teammate do by themselves. 

“No, but it being awful is exactly why you shouldn’t be doing it alone. You can explain your project to me. I can keep up.”

“No.”

“Kid,” Tony said in his best disapproving voice.

“Mark will get mad,” he said quietly as he taped off the second bandage. “He told me not to distract you. Said you were the real blacksmith type and that I should keep you away from my chemistry stuff.”

Tony narrowed his eyes. When had Mark threatened him about that? And why was the kid keeping it a secret? 

“Just don’t watch it,” Peter begged. “Don’t let it distract you. Please.”

“Okay, kid,” Tony said, against his better judgment and immediately regretting it. “I’ll ask him for the footage, then I’ll leave it to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone spot the subtle foreshadowing in this chapter? ;)
> 
> Recovery Prompt Request:  
I’m thinking about doing a recovery fic as a sequel to this Whumptober story once it’s done, so if you have any recovery-type prompts you’d like to see, comment them below or ask them on [my Tumblr](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) and I might use them! 
> 
> Imminent Title Change:  
Sometime between uploading this chapter and the next one, I’ll be changing the title of the this fic to “The Iron Forge (Whumptober 2019).” So no one be surprised or confused when they see the name change in future updates.


	22. Humiliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He could do this. He’d done similar school assignments before. Watch a video and write down what you learn. He could pretend this was a video on lab safety, with stock actors, and he was watching this for his chemistry class. Just a homework assignment. Definitely not reliving a traumatic, near-death experience as a last ditch effort to escape a villain’s evil lair. That would be way too stressful.

Peter dreamed of Yinsen that night. 

An odd dream where the face of a man Peter had never met or even heard of before yesterday seemed as familiar to him as his own. 

He looked sad. He looked proud. He looked a lot like Mr. Stark.

Which woke Peter in a cold sweat. 

_Don’t be Yinsen. _

Mr. Stark had played off Peter’s pleadings as a misunderstanding, but Peter wasn’t so sure.

_I get why he did what he did._

Peter hadn’t been drugged enough to miss the undertones there. That wasn’t the sort of thing you said about something you wouldn’t do yourself.

Mr. Stark kept agreeing that this wasn’t Afghanistan, that the roles didn’t have to be the same, but did he really believe it? Or was just saying it to reassure Peter? 

Peter explored the chain in the dark as he thought, feeling the divots that Mr. Stark’s frantic hammering had left the first time he’d been pulled in. They were there—little places where Peter could activate his stickiness and get a fingertip’s grip—but they weren’t enough. Mark might still demand to sharpen up the spikes today, just in case, but Peter didn’t care one way or the other. He was still stuck. 

The lights came on, Mr. Stark groaned awake from his usual sleeping spot on the floor, and they headed into the lab. 

Peter was both pleased and apprehensive to see a new computer and keyboard perched on a lab table about ten feet from the forge, next to his usual breakfast of oatmeal. 

Well, not new _per se_, but it was new to the lab and to Peter. It was a dusty, outdated thing that Mr. Stark rolled his eyes at, but it actually made Peter smile. It was the same style as the one on his desk he’d built from trashed equipment pulled out of the garbage and repaired. Some of the components even looked a model or two newer than what he’d had to work with. Mark couldn’t have possibly known, but this was right up Peter’s alley. 

Mr. Stark had glanced at it for two minutes, making absolutely sure that there wasn’t a way to use it to send a distress signal, then clapped Peter on the shoulder, telling him to get it over with.

He’d gone back to the forge corner, but Peter could still feel his eyes on him. The sounds of a pencil scratching and book pages flipping were broken by long pauses, and the spider sense on Peter’s neck flared gently every time they did. 

Which normally never happened around Mr. Stark. Peter _knew_ he was the real Mr. Stark. His sense had just been acting up lately. It was probably just reacting to Mark’s threats echoing in his head, reminding him not to distract Mr. Stark with his chemistry projects. Every second Mr. Stark watched him, allowing his attention to be drawn away from his real work, was a threat. Peter didn’t know how much Mark would notice, but he had to get this over with as soon as he could. And as non-distractingly as he could. 

The monitor screen was darkened and warped in one corner, but everything else seemed to work fine. He opened the single, unnamed folder on the desktop and pulled the files out, lining them up neatly. They formed the most intimidating row of icons he’d ever seen in his life, each labeled with a camera number, revealing the seven different angles Peter got to choose from to watch this horror fest.

Well, no time like the present. He opened the first video file, muting the program since there were no headphones. The sound didn’t matter anyway. He just had to see what chemicals fell where. 

The video started from a high angle—likely a camera on the ceiling—and Peter was immediately struck by how small he looked. Small because he was a teenage kid in a large lab, but small because he’d lost a lot of weight. No wonder Mr. Stark had looked so worried. It probably wasn’t all about the ribs. 

Mark back stormed into the camera’s view, and Peter physically jerked back in his chair. 

His spider senses flared as Mr. Stark stopped his work to look up, but Peter kept his face blank and his focus on the computer. If he looked fine, Mr. Stark would go back to work.

On screen, Mark was yelling, then he was grabbing the branding iron, then swinging it and breaking bottles, then grabbing Peter by the rib chain and pulling him in close, and Peter’s eyes glazed out of focus, his heart racing. He fumbled for the pause button. 

He was safe now. He knew that. Well, safe from being hit with a branding iron or exploded in the next thirty seconds, but the video made him look so weak. Mark’s huge shoulders towered over him and Peter cowered under his every move.

Rewinding back to a place where Mark wasn’t blocking the bottles on the tables, he zoomed in a little, trying to ID the chemicals and wishing the decently high-definition camera was better. 

He couldn’t read most of the labels at this angle. Maybe there was a camera with a closer viewpoint. 

Camera Two was closer, which meant Peter almost fell out of his chair when Mark’s furious profile stormed onto the screen. 

He wished Mark had left him headphones. Then he’d be able to heard the sound of Mark’s footsteps before seeing him on-screen. 

Mr. Stark had stopped working again and was a few steps from his work space, but Peter doggedly ignored him, staring unseeingly at the screen as the scene played out before him blurrily. It played out to the end, and Peter stared at the still image, forcing his eyes back into focus.

He could do this. He’d done similar school assignments before. Watch a video and write down what you learn. He could pretend this was a video on lab safety, with stock actors, and he was watching this for his chemistry class. Just a homework assignment. Definitely not reliving a traumatic, near-death experience as a last ditch effort to escape a villain’s evil lair. That would be way too stressful.

He dragged the image back to a shot with the bottles on the table, immediately able to read four or five of them. He started scribbling down a list, drawing a picture of the tabletop and marking where each chemical had been.

Camera Two had the best angles of what was on the table, but Cameras Five and Six had the pretty good angles of what was happening on the floor after Mark left. The corrosive, explosive puddle the chemicals had created was what Peter really needed to study. 

But first to find out everything that was on the table. Standing up from the computer, Peter took a few trips around the lab, pulling out bottles and trays of chemicals, comparing the shapes and sizes of the containers Mark had put back in the lab to replaced the ruined ones for the labels he couldn’t read. Most of them paired up pretty well. There were only three that Peter wasn’t sure about.

Mr. Stark’s sudden voice behind him combined with a jolt in his spider senses made him drop his pencil.

“Video quality could be better, couldn’t it?” Mr. Stark was staring at the still-frame of the puddle on the floor. Mark and Peter were out of frame. 

“Mr. Stark, you said you wouldn’t watch!”

“I’m not watching, just saw,” Mr. Stark said, holding up a book he’d apparently grabbed from the shelf across the room. 

“Well…don’t,” was all Peter mustered.

Mr. Stark just raised an eyebrow. “Take a break if you need it, kid. Work on something else for a while.”

“I don’t need a break. I just want to get this over with.”

Mr. Stark just nodded, moving over to the forge where he tweaked a dial or two, then started reading. 

And Peter dove into the parts of the video he least wanted to see.

Every angle of the hissing mess of chemicals on the floor rose the hackles on Peter’s neck as his spider sense wailed. Each of the videos ended with Peter’s small form being blasted out of frame when everything exploded, then almost a full minute of smoky air filling the room and Mark and the med team running in. 

Camera Seven even had the forge in frame, meaning Peter got to see himself crash into the open door and crumple on the ground beneath it in a pile gory enough that Peter threw up his breakfast into the trash can under his desk—an incredibly painful feat given his rib injury. 

But he’d sat up as quickly as possible, bile still on his lips, to rewind the video and watch again which chemicals had swirled where. He couldn’t let Mr. Stark catch on how much this was messing him up. He was going to have nightmares about this for the rest of his life. But it would be worth it if it gave them the breakthrough that let them escape. 

His spider sense had blared for two whole minutes before Peter looked up, expecting to see Mr. Stark’s worried, distracted face, staring back. 

But he appeared hard at work. So Peter’s spider sense was taking it upon itself to sound a continuous alarm? Great. Very helpful. Was this impending sense of doom an actual warning, or just a result of watching these awful videos? 

He wiped his mouth and started sketching an outline of the puddle on a new piece of paper, marking what chemicals had fallen where and what reactions they’d caused before the big explosion. 

He hated that the big explosion at the end of the video kept catching him off guard. He’d be carefully studying flow patterns and barely shifting colors, when the whole thing would burst into white and Peter would go flying off screen. 

He should have been more specific, should have asked Mark to end the recordings right at the explosion instead of making him watch the aftermath. It was a little too late for that though. 

After roughly ninety minutes of research, Peter had seen himself blown up at least three dozen times.

He’d only thrown up the once, but his hands were shaking as badly as when he’d been given the antidote, and he was getting a killer headache. He was constantly reminding himself not to hyperventilate, but the deep breaths that normally helped calm him down were too painful to maintain with his side in the state it was in. Shallower was better. 

His diagram of the chemical puddle was nearing completion—Peter already had a list of a half-dozen experiments that would be useful to try. He was just rewatching the very end of the puddle flowing from yet another angle—Camera Seven this time—to see if anything had swirled around the hot plate at the last second to cause the final reaction.

He heard the clink of the forge door unlocking behind him, but he still wasn’t expecting the sudden wave of heat that rolled off of it and onto Peter’s back and shoulders. At the same moment, the hot plate on the screen in front of him sparked and the fire erupted and he was blasted across the room. 

Peter hit the ground as hard as he had the first time. Or was this the first time? It felt the same, laying on the floor unable to breathe, feeling too weak to move but forcing himself through the pain to clutch his raw side, his scorched neck and shoulder. 

His eyes were pressed closed against the brightness of the room, and roaring in his ears drowning out any sound, until he heard Mark’s heavy footsteps approaching. But he didn’t study the rib chain across the room this time. Instead he knelt right in front of Peter, saying something unintelligible as he dropped a hand to Peter’s shoulder in an unexpected show of comfort. But Mark never showed comfort. It had to be a threat. 

He pushed the hand away, still unable to hear what Mark was saying over the sound of his own sobs.

Wait, didn’t that mean his lungs were working? Why did it still feel like he couldn’t breathe? 

Mark’s voiced faded in, “Deep breaths, kid. Just take deep breaths.”

He tried, he really did, but it felt like any air he got was ripped right out through the hole in his side. And it hurt, it burned. 

“I can’t,” was all he managed to gasp. 

“Fine, medium breaths then. Anything bigger than you’re doing now.”

Who the hell cared how big his breaths were when he had a damn hole in his rib cage? That’s not how triage worked. Breathing wasn’t going to help anything right now. He could feel his shoulder burning. If anything, not breathing would let him pass out and then he could stop feeling this. 

“Just breathe. You’re fine. The accident happened days ago. Open your eyes and see.”

There was nothing out there he wanted to see. Not the stupid lab. Not Mark’s face. Not his ribs across the room. Not the giant chemical mess in the middle of the room. He didn’t want that to be the last thing he ever saw. 

Mark touched his shoulder again, and Peter pushed him away again, but he was confused now. Why wasn’t he studying the ribs like he’d done last time. Wait, last time? Or this time?

“I’m not Mark,” the familiar voice said. “I’m Tony Stark. It’s 10:37 in the morning, and I think it’s a Saturday. You were watching videos of the lab accident. I opened the forge behind you so it felt hot, but nothing’s burning. Remember how I stitched you up yesterday? You’re doing a lot better? Can you open your eyes now?”

“Mr. Stark?” he gasped through shallow breaths. He opened his eyes, slowly focusing on Mr. Stark’s worried expression. 

“There you go. Now how about you tell me five things you can see while you work on breathing.” His voice was so calm he couldn’t believe he’d mistaken it for Mark’s. He was here, not there. “It helps with panic attacks,” Mr. Stark continued. 

Was that what this was? It felt like he was dying. Like his heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest through the hole in his side. Like he’d never take a full breath again in his life.

“Just breathe and tell me five things you can see,” Mr. Stark said soothingly.

“Bottles on the table,” Peter said, naming the first thing his eyes landed on.

Bottles that might blow up at any moment.

“Scorch mark on the floor.”

A scorch mark where the bottles had blown up before.

“The forge.”

The forge that had burned him.

Was this supposed to make him feel better? Every thing he saw grew more imposing, emanating the threat of the past repeating itself. After all, he was right where it had happened the first time. There was nothing to stop it from happening again. 

“Three’s good enough. Let’s skip to hearing. Tell me three things you can hear too.”

Peter closed him eyes and focused. 

“The forge roaring.”

That had been wide open that day.

“Water in the pipes in the wall”

That fed the sprinklers that had doused him.

“Mark’s heartbeat.”

That had thumped as he knelt over rib shards that day, but that was mere inches away from Peter now. 

“Too close,” Peter said, trying to sidle away. He could feel Mark leaning over him like a demon, ready to tear something else out. 

“I’m not Mark. I’m Tony. I’m Mr. Stark. We’re fine. Feel my heartbeat.”

He pulled Peter’s hand from where it clasped his burning shoulder and brought it to his own chest. The heartbeat thumped under his palm, its vibrations nearly deafening.

Then a new set of vibrations joined them. Something tapping on the back of the same hand. 

_S-O-D-I-U-M. S-O-D-I-U-M. S-O-D-I-U-M. _

That—that meant something, right? It had been Boron before, but the words were supposed to keep changing. Something about primes? 

_S-O-D-I-U-M. S-O-D-I-U-M. S-O-D-I-U-M. _

“It’s really me. Here’s what you’re supposed to say back, but you’re too freaked out right now. This is our code, Pete. I’ve got you, kid.”

The taps changed. 

_A-L-U-M-I-N-U-M. A-L-U-M-I-N-U-M. A-L-U-M-I-N-U-M. _

That’s right. Prime-numbered elements. Mr. Stark remembered. Real Mr. Stark. 

As the implications and details of the code fell back into his mind, so did the words Mr. Stark had been saying earlier. Was still saying now, with Peter’s hand pressed against his chest. 

“I’m Tony Stark. We’re in Mark’s lab, the same place where you had the accident, but he’s not here and you’re already healing. You were watching the videos and panicked, but everything’s fine.”

The relief of those truths would have knocked him off his feet had he been standing. He wasn’t alone with Mark. It was a different day because Mr. Stark was here to help him. He was here to help them escape. 

Peter was aware enough now to be humiliated at the sob that escaped his lips as soon as he had any air back, but not in control enough to stop the next one. Or the next. 

But Mr. Stark’s even breaths helped his own. He wasn’t saying anything anymore, just kneeling next to Peter, looking down at him, then glancing up at the computer with a harsh expression, craning his head to see it. 

No. 

That was wrong. That was dangerous.

“You shouldn’t…be here,” Peter gasped as he pulled his hand back from Mr. Stark’s grasp, squeezing it into a fist on his own chest. 

“We’ve been over this. Mark called me with an offer—”

“I know,” Peter said, “but you should…be forging something…I’m distracting you.”

“You’re having a full-on panic attack is what you’re doing, kid.”

That didn’t matter. That wasn’t important. 

“Fine, whatever…but you still need…to go. Mark said…Mark said…”

“Hey, what happened to those medium-sized breaths you were getting so good at?”

Mr. Stark was right, he couldn’t breathe again. But it wasn’t because he felt trapped in the past. It was because he felt trapped in the present. Because if Mr. Stark stayed here, stayed distracted, Mark was coming. 

His spider sense had been triggering constantly, but it buzzed harder at the thought. He pushed himself to a sitting position, swatting away Mr. Stark’s helping hands.

“You’ve got…to get back…to work.”

Was Mark actually coming or was his spider sense on the fritz? Or was that just part of panic attacks? Too bad he didn’t know any other panicking spider people he could ask.

“I will once you stop breathing like a Lamaze instructor.”

Whatever that was.

“No…now…Go…go away.” His last words were barely a whisper, the air in his lungs was so scarce. He just needed to breathe like a normal person. Why couldn’t he breathe?

Mr. Stark stood abruptly and walked away, but he was back with a syringe and the bottle of painkillers before Peter could calm his breathing.

“Don’t get used to treating panic attacks like this, kid,” he said with gravity as he drew some out. “It’s a dark road.”

Then he shot the painkillers into Peter’s shoulder with shaking hands but without another word. Peter didn’t move to stop him. Wasn’t sure he could even if he wanted to. Wasn’t sure if he wanted to. 

“It’s just a half dose, okay?” Mr. Stark said, wiping away a drop of blood from the injection site. “It’ll help you calm down.”

He didn’t think it was time for another dose yet. Peter couldn’t do the math through the panic still swirling in his mind. Couldn’t even do the more important math to figure out how long he’d been distracting Mr. Stark from the real work that had to be done.

“Your palms are bleeding, kid. Relax your hands.”

Something pulled his fingers loose, and he let them fall open shakily, clenching his jaw instead. 

“Your fingernails…” Mr. Stark said, and his voice registered as so strange that Peter was looking to see what he meant before it really computed. 

Where the cuticle met the skin of his fingers was colored a dark purplish blue. 

“That’s new,” Peter said without thinking. “Is that a part of panic attacks?”

His head drooped as a wave of exhaustion hit him. That or a wave of painkillers. He couldn’t tell the difference. 

“No. I mean maybe. Shit. I don’t know. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. Just take those medium breaths.”

He hadn’t heard Mr. Stark sound so uncertain since he’d arrive. He looked like he knew something he wasn’t saying, but Peter was too tired to figure out exactly what it was. 

“Should have done a quarter dose,” he heard Mr. Stark murmur under his breath. 

But it was too late now, with the drugs running through his system and making him cold and lethargic. More than usual if Mr. Stark had give him this before he was due for his next dose. But he shouldn’t worry. Dr. Cho had given Mr. Stark instructions. He wouldn’t overdose him.

Mr. Stark stood up, walking over to the computer. Panic welled up in Peter again, but it was tamped down by exhaustion. 

“You’re done with this project,” Mr. Stark said. “I told you yesterday it was too much, and you’ve been at it all morning. Tell me what’s left, and I’ll finish it.”

He rifled through the papers on the desk, glancing at the diagrams of the table and the puddle Peter had made, then clicking at something on the computer.

Mr. Stark couldn’t watch that! Mark would be mad, and Peter would be ashamed, humiliated to be seen weak and cowering and almost killed. 

“No. Just get back to work…so Mark doesn’t get mad.”

“That shtick is getting really old, kid,” Mr. Stark said, sounding frustrated. “I don’t give a damn what Mark thinks. This is too much for you,” he raised his voice and glared at a camera, “which any _moron_ can see. So I’m stepping in. Twenty minutes and neither of us will have to ever see these damn videos again.”

Mr. Stark tapped away at the keyboard, squinting as he looked at the screen again. 

“I’ve got enough to start working without the videos now,” Peter begged from the floor. His legs were feeling too shaky to stand on. “I won’t watch anymore.”

“Nonsense, you’ve got at least four blanks here I can help you fill in.” 

He rapped the papers in question with his knuckles, but Peter never got to respond. Instead he followed the deafening blare of his spider senses, crawling to his knees before the chain of the rib shackles snapped taut with a metallic shing and started retracting. 

Fast.

His own weak scramblings were only half the force propelling him toward the door; the chain’s incessant, painful pull was the other half. 

“Hey!” Mr. Stark yelled as Peter reached this door and threw his chained side against the bottom of it. 

The chain pulled tighter than it ever had before, and Peter swore he felt something crack this time, just as it stopped. He yelled as a new pain flared to life around the shackles. Not a good sign. Not for his ribs and not for whatever rage Mark was about to rain down on them. 

Mr. Stark knelt next to him, a hand on his back as the lab door slammed open, and Mark’s heavy leather boots pounded across the room until the stood six inches in front of Peter’s head. He could see the ember-sized burns covering them from this close, could smell a faint burning scent. 

“Did you even listen to a single word I said?” Mark yelled. Mr Stark’s hand stiffened on his back. Was he being yelled at? Peter couldn’t see who Mark was looking at.

A boot stomped down on Peter’s hand, effectively answering that question.

“Yes! I listened! I tried!” Peter said as loud as he could manage while still feeling breathless. The cold ground against his chest made him shiver. 

Mark kept his boot planted on Peter’s hand but knelt down to get in his face. His mouth was twisted into a fierce growl.

“How’s he supposed to get any work done if he’s looking after your sorry self all the time?”

“I tried to tell him,” Peter said. Tried not to sob.

“It’s on me,” Mr. Stark said, taking a swipe at Mark’s leg that didn’t budge. “I’m the one getting distracted.”

“You should have listened better then,” Mark said.

Peter was thinking the same thing. 

“Pepper’s always telling me I need to listen better,” Mr. Stark said far too casually. “It’s one of my fatal flaw.”

Peter could have cursed if he’d had the breath. Mr. Stark never let up, did he? 

“Ah. There’s the infamous Stark snark.” Mark stood, and Peter caught a glimpse of a backhanded swinging fist before Mr. Stark’s hand left his back and he toppled to the side. “I’ve had far too much of that and not nearly enough of the infamous Stark genius. A half-assed miniature robot and a shoddily made arc reactor casing? Really? That’s all you’ve got so far?”

Mr. Stark rose to his feet, his lip bloodied. “You know what they say. A man is only as good as his supervisor.”

That passive aggressive sarcasm had to be hiding fear or anger—Peter did the same thing as Spider-Man all the time—but this wasn’t the place for it. 

But Mr. Stark was standing tall again, so supremely confident, that Peter started to doubt. Maybe Peter was just too broken to see it. He was the cowering kid from the videos. Maybe if that kid had stood up for himself like Mr. Stark was doing now, he would still have all his ribs. Maybe he should stop taking things laying down, even though he literally didn’t have another option right now. Maybe he should defer to Mr. Stark’s judgment. After all, he’d been kidnapped before. And he’d survived. Come out more glorious than before. Middle fingers all the way, he’d said. He knew what he was doing.

But he didn’t know Mark. 

_This isn’t Afghanistan. _

He didn’t know Mark like Peter did.

Peter had debated his philosophies instead of dismissing them out of hand. He’d respected and learned his rules instead of pushing right through them. He knew from everything Mark had said and done that his instincts to lay low and shut up were correct.

This wasn’t Afghanistan at all. Mr. Stark’s captors there had wanted him to build a missile—a purely physical one-off—so they’d probably ignored the snark. If they’d even understood it to begin with. Yinsen had probably been tactful enough not to translate it. 

But Mark wanted more than that. He wanted a physical invention too, but more than that he wanted to convince Peter and Mr. Stark that they were all people cut from the same cloth. That they had a future together as allies who turned a blind eye to moral differences. 

Mark seemed to think Peter was too naive or worthless to keep convincing, but Mr. Stark was still an option for an ally. An infinitely more valuable option. 

And every time he said something snarky that revealed just how little he thought of Mark and his plans, that outcome became less and less likely. That wasn’t just a middle finger anymore. That was sabotage. 

“As good as his supervisor?” Mark scoffed. “No. A man is only as good as his motivation, so maybe you need more.” He pointed a forge-blackened finger at Peter. “If he’s such a distraction, then you two won’t be working together tomorrow.”

“Oh, an upgrade?” Mr. Stark said, unable to let go of his sarcasm for one stupid second. “One of us gets a private lab?”

“No,” Mark said. “Tomorrow, he doesn’t leave the cell.”

Not good. No work meant no food like the first three days he’d been here. Did Mr. Stark realize that?

“A sick day would do the kid some good anyway.”

No, Mr. Stark. Don’t make the used bait look weaker. Peter was already weak enough.

“Not true,” Peter said loudly. “I can work.”

Mark ground his boot on Peter’s fingers and he got the hint with a yelp. He rested his forehead on the cold ground as the grown-ups argued.

“We don’t do sick days here,” said Mark. “It’ll be an unpaid leave of absence. And don’t think you’ll get the chance to give him your meal again. You’re lucky you weren’t punished for that the first time.”

Peter’s eyes widened. When had Mr. Stark given him his food? It had to be when he’d fallen asleep before the stitches. Peter had gotten medical supplies instead of food, but Mr. Stark had given him both. Peter had known the no-working, no-food rule. He should have known better than to eat it. 

“You’ve got to feed him!” Mr. Stark yelled. “If it’s my fault for getting distracted, take my food away. He needs it more than I do.”

“You should have thought of that before messing around.”

Mr. Stark opened his mouth to reply, but Peter shot out an arm and grabbed his ankle, shaking his head as he stared at the ground. Miraculously, Mr. Stark snapped his mouth shut. 

“Keep away from him, Stark,” Mark said. “You have work to do.”

Then, to Peter, “For your sake, I hope he’s a better listener this time.” 

With a final twisting crunch of his boot, he stepped off of Peter’s hand and left the lab, slamming the door behind him. 

The chain loosened and Peter relaxed fully onto the ground. He drew the fingers Mark had stepped on up to his face. Not broken, just scraped up. And still blue at the fingernails, whatever that meant. 

He pushed himself to all fours with shaky hands, groaning when both sides of rib cage twinged with pain. One hand collapsed, the elbow crashing to the ground. He leaned over it, resting his forehead on that forearm, the other palm still planted on the floor, the only parts of Peter that felt firmly grounded anywhere. 

Mr. Stark’s hand clutched his elbow to help him up, but Peter shoved it away harshly, nearly falling over without the extra support. 

“Didn’t you hear a single thing he said?” Peter hissed as he rebalanced on his hands and knees. “Keep back.”

He was starting to sound like Mark, which was probably why Mr. Stark frowned.

“Yeah, but you heard him. I’ve never been good at listening.”

Obviously. If he had, then Mark wouldn’t have gotten mad and Peter wouldn’t have lost an entire day of lab time and meals. And he knew it wasn’t really Mr. Stark’s fault, that he was probably doing his best, but Peter had _tried_ to warn him.

“Get better at it then, because he’s not going to put up with you taunting him like that.”

He sat back on his heels, but the movement quickly gave way to him sitting all the way back, his sticky grip on the floor the only thing stopping him from falling over. He was more exhausted than usual, although the jury was still out if that was due to the panic attack or the extra painkillers.

“Middle fingers all the way, kid, remember? I’ve been on this kidnapping carnival ride before.”

And that was the big problem. This wasn’t Afghanistan. He had to get Mr. Stark to understand that Mark was a different beast than his Afghani captors had likely been.

“No, you haven’t,” Peter spat, his anger amplified by his newly stinging ribs and the drugs loosening his tongue. “This isn’t Afghanistan, Mr. Stark. There’s no Yinsen here who can translate around your stupid sarcasm ad snark.”

Mr. Stark visibly flinched when Yinsen’s name was said, but Peter wasn’t done. 

“Maybe it built some camaraderie or whatever between you and Yinsen to have inside jokes, but Mark’s in on all the jokes here. And every time you make fun of him or his lab, he realizes that the chances of convincing you to work with him in the future after we’ve escaped are smaller than he thought. In Afghanistan, they just wanted a product, right? But Marks wants a business relationship, and you’re screwing it up.”

Peter slid back so he could lean against the wall, his right arm wrapped around his stomach to brace his ribs. Mr. Stark didn’t touch him, but he was still too close. Still too distracted if they were playing by Mark’s book, which they had to. He had to wrap this up quick.

“Good,” Mr. Stark said. “I don’t want him thinking he’s got Iron Man on his side.”

There were far worse things than that.

“And what’s he going to do once he realizes that we’re useless to him?”

Should they be saying this in front of the cameras? Peter wished they were truly alone, but he wished a lot of things right now. Cameras were everywhere, so it wasn’t like they had another choice. 

“He’s going to realize that anyway,” Mr. Stark said. “It’s inevitable. My signature snark is a calculated risk. Getting under people’s skin puts them off their game, which is when they start making mistakes.”

It sounded like he’d thought this through, but Peter still had the gut feeling that Mr. Stark was almost as scared as he was and winging this whole thing.

“Mistakes that get us hurt.”

“Sometimes,” Mr. Stark allowed, “but they also get us things like medical supplies. And I’m sort of the king of calculated risks. Do you know the probability of the Mark 1 catching fire when I ignited the—”

“Is that what coming here was?” Peter interrupted. “A calculated risk? When you had, like, five minutes to decide?”

“Exactly.”

The pure confidence that Peter usually found so admirable was just irritating now. 

“No, don’t pretend like you thought this through.”

“I did think it through!”

“No, you didn’t, because you’re exactly where you shouldn’t be.”

“You shouldn’t be here either.”

“I know! But at least when I was here by myself, I was protecting you. I took the bullet for you, even if it was an accident.” Mr. Stark flinched bigger this time, but it was the truth, and Peter was glad of it. “And then I was bait, which was worse, but now I’m not even that. You’re here now, and I’m some pointless sidekick that Mark thinks is an annoying waste of resources more than anything, and that’s going to get me killed if we’re not both careful.” He lowered his voice, but not the energy in it. “Nobody keeps old, used bait around when they realize that’s what they’ve got.”

“You’re more than bait, kid.”

Which was a lovely sentiment if things weren’t so dire. Reassuring Peter that he was somehow important in Mark’s eyes was a pandering they couldn’t afford here. More than bait? Peter knew his place here. And Mr. Stark was still missing the point.

“Says the fish who took it,” Peter said angrily. 

Mr. Stark glared. “You’re no—”

“I know I’m more than bait,” Peter interrupted, emphasizing his next words, “when I’m _out there_. But in here, I’m nothing in Mark’s eyes, and since he’s in charge, it’s his opinion that really counts. I know what I’m worth in here because it’s dangerous not to. You can’t bet more than you have and think it’ll go your way, so don’t patronize me by acting like I’m more important than your work in here. Stop messing with his rules and his priorities. It’s making things worse.”

“You were having a panic attack,” Mr. Stark said, frustration and fury clear on his face. Angry at Mark or angry at Peter? “I’m not just going to sit by helplessly while you deal with that.”

“You should. It’s better than having no food and no work for another day.” 

The pained look on Mr. Stark’s face was the same one he always got when they talked about Peter’s first days here. Maybe that would be what convinced him. 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think he’d do something like that.”

“He always will, Mr. Stark. That’s what I’m trying to say. You’re not scared of this guy, and it’s hurting us both. He’ll always do what he says, and then he’ll do worse the next time. Of course he’s going to separate us if I’m distracting you. We should have seen that coming.”

Mr. Stark’s faced darkened, but Peter didn’t stop talking. If a little bit of guilt was going to get his point across, then so be it. “No, I know that’s wrong and messed up, but it’s consistent for Mark, and you should have seen that coming. The more we push, the worse it’ll get. It could be worse. So much worse. Like, actual torture.”

“This definitely qualifies as actual torture, kid.”

“But he could still find a way to make it worse!” Peter wondered if this was what May or Mr. Stark felt like in the middle of giving him a lecture. He felt like he was saying so much, and he couldn’t tell if any of it was actually landing. “Look, it took me three days to get it too. Three days where I refused to work and he refused to feed me and said he’d ship my dead body back to you after I starved, and he was so calm about it. And I decided then that he meant every word that he said. Nothing is idle. This is only day four for you with Mark, so I get it, I really do. But don’t make things worse anymore. You shouldn’t have given me food or let me sleep in the lab or let me distract you from your work, no matter what’s happening. You’ve got to follow the rues, even if they’re stupid and you think they’ll hurt me. He’ll hurt me worse than his rules.”

Peter pointed at the forge. “So forget about me for now and do what you came here to do. Invent away. Invent us a way out of here. That’s how you can help.”

“You were the endgame, kid. Kind of hard to forget that.”

He was still arguing back, but Peter could see in his face that he’d won. Mr. Stark’s eyes weren’t angry anymore, just sad. 

“Focus on the plan then, but don’t let me get in the way of it anymore.”

He tried to stand to emphasize his point by getting back to work himself but slid down the wall instead, arm pressed against the pain surrounding the chain.

Mr. Stark moved forward like he was going to help Peter up. “Can’t I at leas—”

“No,” Peter waved him away again. “Leave me alone. I’ll get up in a minute.”

Mr. Stark froze. “That one hurt worse than before, didn’t it? Think they’re broken?”

Maybe. But would that change anything?

“I think it doesn’t matter. Get back to work.”

That had sounded like an actual order, popping out of Peter’s mouth by accident. It took everything in him not to apologize at the sad, guilty look on Mr. Stark’s face. He hadn’t meant to be so harsh, but that extra dose Mr. Stark had put him on had sure knocked down a few walls. 

And he hadn’t said anything that was untrue or that Mr. Stark hadn’t needed to hear. 

Was this how Mr. Stark felt while handing out orders on missions? Did he watch people digest them, then wait uncomfortably to see if they’d actually follow through?

Mr. Stark glanced at the medical corner, then the computer, like he was considering staying distracted despite everything Peter had said, but he turned back to the forge without another word, leaving Peter on the floor. 

Orders received then. Even if he didn’t look happy about it. That was probably what Peter looked like as Spider-Man when he reluctantly followed another order to round up civilians and stay out of the main fray when he knew he could do more. Following orders, but not being happy about it. 

He’d never have dared to give Iron Man orders before. And he never would have expected them to be followed. Something about their relationship had changed. Or those painkillers really were something.

They’d kicked in so Peter could only feel a dull ache in his chained ribs that were maybe cracked, maybe broken, maybe fractured, maybe whatever other horrors could happen to ribs that he’d missed in anatomy class. 

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. Mark wouldn’t care, so Peter wouldn’t care. Couldn’t afford to care. He had the rest of the day to get his chemistry experiments off the ground before being grounded to the cell the next day, so he may as well get to work.

Pressing his sticky palms against the wall behind him, he slowly walked them up the wall behind him until he was standing. He grabbed his notes from the table he’d been working at and moved to one further away from the forge. It was colder, but he couldn’t afford another heat-induced panic attack either.

He pulled out a hot plate, three of the most promising chemicals from his list, and some sheets of caminium to test reactions against and got to work in the hours he had left before the end of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing any predictions, critiques, or favorite lines you have! Or any recovery prompts for the sequel once Whumptober is over.
> 
> Come chat on Tumblr! I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	23. Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bandages stuck a little when he pulled them away from the side wound, which was looking a little red near the side that was still partially open. Red and warm. But that might just be because the kid was feeling warm all over. Throwing all subtlety to the wind, Tony put a palm to the kid’s forehead. Definitely too warm.

The cell lights flipped on with the sudden brightness of stage lights at a convention, and a quiet alarm sounded, jolting Tony from another uncomfortable night’s sleep on the hard floor.

Peter rolled over and mumbled something as Tony stood up, stretched, and yawned, wincing as his split lip cracked open a little.

“Go back to sleep, kid. I’ll see you at the end of the day.”

Peter didn’t say anything, just rolling over again in the bed. When the wall rolled up a few minutes later, Tony walked through to the lab, the door snapping all the way closed with a resonant finality behind him.

Another eight and a half hours to kill in the lab. This time on his own, while the kid starved in the room. All because Tony didn’t know how to read a situation and keep his stupid mouth shut.

He grabbed the circuit board he’d been working on yesterday, pulling out a few more pieces to solder onto it and moving to the solder station.

Yesterday had been a complete disaster, but the kid was right. Tony had been reckless, had been thinking like this was another Afghanistan, but it was a completely different game with new rules. If they wanted to win the sick game Mark had put them in, they had to know both the rules and the values of the pieces on the board in order to to predict what sorts of moves Mark would make.

Mark was obsessed with Tony Stark—he’d been the kidnapping target all along. But the teenage superhero who’d gotten in the way and hadn’t given him a metallurgic breakthrough in three weeks? And who wasn’t well connected enough to be a useful ally? He was much less useful to Mark’s ultimate plan.

And if Mark thought the kid was an irritating distraction to Tony, the most Tony could do was prove him wrong by not getting distracted, even when the kid was having a damn panic attack on the floor.

The soldering iron in his hand slipped, depositing a lump of the silver metal in the middle of the board where it bubbled then immediately cooled. He was distracted _now_, and the kid wasn’t even in the same room.

The idea of ignoring the kid no matter what made practical sense, but he hated it. It was reinforcing Peter being worthless. It was going to come back to bite them somehow—he just knew it—but he couldn’t see a way around it.

It was disturbing that Mark thought Tony could just choose not to be distracted by the kid. Assuming an injured lab partner wasn’t going to change the working dynamic was idiotic. Tony was at least 20% distracted just by having the kid in the same room, always feeling the need to check up on him, make sure he didn’t looked pained or pale.

If Mark figured that out, he’d probably take the kid away and hide him somewhere else. Tony might not see him again until they escaped. And maybe not even then. His hand tightened around the soldering iron. Mark could be doing that right now in the cell and Tony would be none the wiser, completely powerless to stop him.

Finishing the soldering, Tony fired up the forge, gathering materials to make an exoskeleton for the wall-crawler bot, which Peter had insisted he call Spider-bot. He tried not to look at the scorch mark on the floor every time he passed it, tried to ignore the blinking lights of the ancient computer Peter had been working at yesterday.

Tony had caught thirty seconds of the video while he and Peter had argued, before Mark had put a violent end to that, but it was enough. It was too much. Every time he saw the computer, images of Mark waving a branding iron sprung to mind, of Peter looking both angry and scared, of the explosion and the kid lying bleeding on the ground, of Mark picking up the bloody chain like it was a holy relic.

How the kid had stood nearly two hours of watching that before having a panic attack, Tony would never understand. Kid was tough. Too tough. He shouldn’t have had to be so tough.

He finished up work with the circuit board, working on the simple programming he’d need for it on the ancient computer at Peter’s workspace. He left the video files alone and yelled at the cameras first that he was doing his own stuff so Mark wouldn’t get mad. The kid was right. Nothing good happened when he was mad.

When lunch came, Tony guiltily ate most of it. He peeled the orange and put all the slices in his pocket, snacking on them slowly over the next hour. Mark probably wouldn’t notice if he left two of the slices in there to bring to Peter. It was a pathetic offering and Peter might still refuse it, but Tony had to try something.

When the wall rolled up and Tony moved back into the cell at the end of the day, Peter was awake, still lying down in the bed.

“Hey, Mr. Stark! How was work?” Peter piped up so cheerily that Tony couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“Awful. I’m starting to get why everyone complains about the 9-5 grind.”

Peter chuckled, then coughed, then grimaced while suppressing the next few coughs, and the smile disappeared from Tony’s face.

The kid was pale, his drawn face practically ghostly against the red Iron Man sheets. He hadn’t had any painkillers since yesterday afternoon because Tony had left the syringes in the lab like an idiot, too used to be able to give him a dose first thing in the morning. His side had to be killing him.

Peter patted an open space on the bed next to him and Tony sat down. “Spider-bot is almost done,” he said, pulling out the syringes and bandages he’d brought from the lab and laying them out on the bed. “Should be ready for a maiden voyage tomorrow afternoon.”

“Nice! I should have something to burn through this stupid chain by then. And maybe even something that blows up.”

“Maybe we should put some of that on Spider-bot.”

Peter laughed, then coughed into his shoulder, making a pained face again. Tony grabbed his hand when he was done, surprised by how warm it felt as he inspected the fingernails.

Damn. Still blue. Helen had warned him about that, said it was a symptom of painkiller overdose to watch out for. But Peter hadn’t had any pain relief in over a day. Had Tony gone overboard dosing him the first few days and it was just catching up to him now? It could be related to something else entirely, but what if that still made it dangerous to give him more painkillers now?

He thought back to F.R.I.D.A.Y. telling him and Helen the complications of uncontrolled pain. Affected immune, cardiovascular, neurological, and endocrine systems, causing adrenal exhaustions, cognitive decline, and whatever else he was forgetting.

Which was worse: uncontrolled pain or possible overdose because of blue fingernails?

Helen had given him other warning signs too. Blue lips, which the kid didn’t have, and breathing difficulty, which Tony could hear pretty clearly this close. A little wheeze with every inhale. He’d already cleared his throat a half dozen times. His stop-giving-him-painkillers treatment plan hadn’t stopped the blue and wasn’t something he wanted to test long term. Not when the kid still had an open wound and maybe two more cracked or broken ribs after yesterday’s fiasco.

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?”

Tony glanced up at Peter’s face to see a small smile, but also scrunched eyebrows. He dropped Peter’s hand, which he’d been holding long enough to be awkward, and reached for the bottle of painkillers, rolling them around in his palm.

“That depends. How are your ribs? The left ones, I mean.”

“Probably not broken. Maybe cracked because they still hurt a little.” He moved a hand to hover over it protectively. “Makes it hurt more to breathe too.”

Well, that was great. Not like the kid needed to do that every four seconds or anything. That decided it.

“Bed rest did you good, kid, but you’re not there yet. I’m prescribing a half dose of painkillers and two orange slices.”

“I don’t think there’s a pharmacy nearby that can fill those.”

“You’re lucky SI just started one then,” Tony said, discreetly pulling the slices out of his pocket, keeping them concealed from the camera in the corner.

“I’m not hungry,” Peter said, looking away uncomfortably.

That was concerning if it was true, but it was probably just Peter trying to follow the rules again. And Tony was sure he’d gotten away with this one.

“Eat ‘em anyway,” Tony said. “I’ll block the cameras while you do, then we’ll do your side.”

Peter hesitated for a few second, then grabbed and scarfed down the orange slices as Tony drew out a half dose into the syringe and shot it into Peter’s shoulder. Again, the skin was too warm.

The kid sighed almost immediately.

The bandages stuck a little when he pulled them away from the side wound, which was looking a little red near the side that was still partially open. Red and warm. But that might just be because the kid was feeling warm all over. Throwing all subtlety to the wind, Tony put a palm to the kid’s forehead. Definitely too warm.

“Don’t worry,” Peter said, pushing Tony’s hand away, then laying back and closing his eyes. “I’ll sleep it off.”

Right. Like that wasn’t what he’d been doing all day. Tony just nodded, applied some antibiotic cream, and bandaged his side again.

“Sorry I yelled at you yesterday,” Peter said, eyes still closed. “I freaked out, and I shouldn’t have.”

He’d been forceful yesterday, he’d been out of line, but circumstances like this redrew all the lines anyway. Who knew where they stood with each other anymore. The only important thing was that Peter had been right. Tony had to be more careful.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Don’t get used to it either, but you’re fine. You were right.”

The kid was already looking half asleep, his face relaxing.

“It’s just…so stupid,” he said tiredly. “Not fair. Any of it. I don’t get it.”

It was such a childish thing to say, to imagine that villains had to make sense or were ever going to play fair. He was still so young. Still trying to understand the world. He was still a kid. Not meant in an incapable or impulsive way. Just in a tragic way. He was still trying to stay a kid.

“You do get it, kid. Better than I do. But you’re right. It’s stupid as hell.”

Peter’s breaths evened out and Tony laid down on his usual spot on the floor, staring at the ceiling until the lights went out, imagining Spider-bot racing through the conduits up there and cutting through out all the wiring he could get too. It wasn’t much of a dream, but it was enough.

* * *

Peter was even warmer when he woke up, shaking like a pile of leaves and complaining about the cold the second he crawled out from under the blankets to head into the lab with Tony.

They were both let into the lab, which meant Mark either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared about the orange slices. Peter sat at his table, and Tony immediately grabbed the three lab coats and draped them over his shivering shoulders without a word.

The kid’s fever had gone up, but Tony couldn’t tell by how much. He started rummaging around in cabinets and drawers for a thermometer for the kid.

“What are you looking for?”

Peter’s slightly suspicious question brought his digging around to a screeching half. Damn. This counted as getting distracted, didn’t it? He’d have to leave the kid’s fever to its own devices. He hated leaving thing to their own devices. But it wasn’t like having an exact temperature was going to matter anyway. It wasn’t going to change what Tony could or couldn’t do about the situation.

“Nothing, kid. Just a backup circuit board I was working on yesterday. Mark must have taken it last night.”

He moved back to his work space, checking to see if there was anything that actually had been moved around.

“Guess he’s trying to step into electronics now,” Peter said with a left-shouldered shrug.

“He’s already there, kid. I skimmed an article he wrote the other day about a more conductive alloy for circuit board tracks. Apparently the Forgemaster has his tongs in everything.” He was hard pressed to think of something Mark hadn’t dabbled in, actually. And he hadn’t even read as much as the kid had in his time here.

“Right?” Peter agreed. “He’s all over the place. Publishes more in a year than some people do in a decade. More than you ever did, even.”

Exactly. And Tony’s research, which had never been known for being specialized or slow to produce, looked like a slow shot from a sniper rifle compared to Mark’s rapid-fire shotgun approach. He dabbled in metallurgy, electromagnetics, chemistry, circuitry, medicine, medical practices, computer science, botany, even the odd biology paper. And a lot of it published with only a few co-researchers. Or none.

“I wonder how many patents he’s got on this stuff,” Tony wondered. If it were any significant number, Tony should have run across his work while researching.

“At least a hundred,” Peter said sounding thoughtful as he mixed yet another goopy compound in a glass beaker. “It’s weird though. He doesn’t follow through on a lot of stuff.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, some of his stuff opens pretty obvious doors to other applications and breakthroughs and logical next research areas, but he never stays in one place for long.” Peter looked up and paused until Tony started screwing exoskeleton plates together. Right, couldn’t get distracted. “Like his research on a more efficient way to strengthen organic material bonds,” Peter continued. “That should have immediately led to medical applications, but he just dropped it. Didn’t even mention it in the Further Research section of his paper. Then a few years later, Dr. Cho picked it up and made the connections and used it to improve the regeneration cradle. We had to read her paper in biology class last semester. Mark should have been able to get that himself, especially since he’s made other medical improvements.”

It was odd, but the kid might be thinking too much into it. Trying to understand things that couldn’t be understood.

“Maybe he just doesn’t see those connections,” Tony offered. “Maybe he gets bored. Maybe he gets distracted by something else as soon as he’s done.” That was usually to blame when Tony left something off. He just felt like doing something different.

“Have you seen how obsessed he is with caminium? Getting distracted isn’t really his style.”

“Then he goes through manic phases,” Tony said with a shrug. “That’s his current obsession, but he’ll drop it as soon as he publishes something good about it.”

“No,” Peter said, sounding more confused the more he thought about it. “Articles on caminium are some of his earliest publications. And there’s a lot. He’s always been obsessed with the stuff. But a lot of his other work doesn’t relate to it even tangentially. They’re completely different fields. It’s like he’s got fifteen different degrees. And the work is too deep and thorough not to see some of these connections between the fields.”

“Maybe he’s too busy torturing geniuses like us,” Tony said. “Or here’s one. Maybe he’s a genius, but he’s just crazy. People don’t always have to make sense.”

A coughing fit from Peter put an end to the conversation then. Tony wanted to grab the kid a glass of water, but he just tapped his foot loudly as he continued assembling the bot.

By lunchtime, Peter had used his chemical goop to successfully burn through a quarter-inch sheet of caminium, but he still wasn’t satisfied. The reaction had taken nearly twenty minutes and lost all its potency after that. He still had a ways to go, but Tony was sure he’d get there. The kid was a chemical genius, despite Mark’s opinion.

Peter didn’t seem that hungry, but Tony pressed him to eat as they talked. The kid asked for advice on caminium, and Tony had pointed out the organic inclusion he’d noticed in the metal. Peter had waved that away, having already studied it in the journals he’d read. He wanted to know what was different actually working with the metal, which Tony didn’t have much to say on. It was a pretty average metal, all things considered.

After lunch, Peter went straight back to to his table, shivering through the three lab coats he was wearing. His face had taken on a pink fever-flush and he was coughing—or trying not to—more than ever, but Tony just gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it. The faster he could get them out of here, the faster he could get the kid a cough drop and a real doctor.

Tony was nearly done with his Spider-bot. Almost ready to pull off an outlet cover and let it loose in the walls to snip wires to its heart’s content. He just had to insulate the shears, then wait until Peter could burn through his chain first. Tony had programmed the bot to crawl a fair distance through the walls before starting to cut through wires and perforate pipes. Hopefully a diversion in another part of the building would give them a better chance of escape. But there was no point in making a diversion before the kid could run away.

Tony still had the final assembly of parts left, which was proving to be more difficult than anticipated. He hadn’t worked with an actual forge in ages. Normally he had an AI run a project through a simulation, then build it with the given specs. Machines did the smelting and shaping, so Tony was a little rusty.

The project had needed quite a few small pieces connected together, and things had slotted together just wrong enough so the main circuit board wouldn’t slide into place in the center where it wouldn’t get jostled around or scraped up.

Ten frustrated minutes of trying to cram it in there culminated in Tony accidentally snapping the whole board in half.

“Damn it!”

There went four hours of soldering work. He threw it on the floor angrily as Peter watched through his lab goggles.

“Everything okay?”

“Just peachy, kid,” Tony said, trying to keep his frustration under control. “I’ve ruined four hours of work because I can’t build my bots to spec without an AI anymore. Some genius I am.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Peter said. “Don’t you know how many tries it took for Edison to invent the light bulb?

Not the time for a pep talk, kid. Especially one that used a role model with as many problems as that one had.

“There’s a whole lot more to that story,” Tony said, “but the biggest difference here is that I’m not building a brand new light bulb. Just some basic circuitry inside a robot. That should only take me one try.”

“But you’ve got—”

But Tony never found out what he had because Peter stopped talking, instead jumping off his stool and walking quickly toward the roll-up wall.

The sound of the winch winding up the rib chain reached Tony’s ears. His eyes widened as he thought desperately back to the last five minutes.

They hadn’t broken the rules. He hadn’t been distracted. Giving him lab coats earlier had been getting distracted, but that had taken ten seconds and happened hours ago. He’d been talking to Peter just now, but only about work. They wouldn’t be punished for venting a little frustration, right?

Mark slammed the door open, pushing a button on the remote and Peter laid down near the wall. The grinding sound stopped with a few feet of slack chain on the ground for once. So they couldn’t be in too big of trouble.

What had the kid said earlier? _It could be worse. Don__’t make it worse_. Tony chanted that in his head and Mark approached. He had to keep his tongue in check this time.

“We’re working on our own projects,” Tony said levelly. “No need to come raging in here again.”

“Oh, I know,” Mark said, his huge shoulders pumping with each angry step towards Tony. “The kid’s keeping away because he knows what’s good for him. I’ve got a bone to pick with you this time.”

Tony winced at the word choice. Hopefully not a literal bone. But either way, it was better than him having another bone to pick with Peter.

“Perfect. What can I do for you?” Tony stood his ground, feeling like he was facing off against an angry bull.

“Invent something besides this assembly-line factory garbage,” Mark huffed heatedly. “Nothing here is new or innovative.”

“They’re made of caminium, which I’ve never seen before,” Tony said, adding in a little flattery for good measure, “so that makes them innovative to me.”

Mark didn’t take it. “No, where’s the great Tony Stark innovation? Arc reactors and Iron Man suits are what I signed up for, not second-rate science fair projects.”

That bot was at least a first-rate science fair project, although Tony would admit it was nothing earth-shattering. To anyone but Mark, that was.

“Sorry, but you can’t rush art. I don’t control when the scientific muses strike.”

“Then let me remove one more distraction.”

He turned toward Peter, and Tony’s heart nearly stopped. He couldn’t take the kid away. He hadn’t even broken the rules; neither of them had! But then again, Peter hadn’t broken the rules when Mark came raging in threatening to beat some sense into him with a branding iron.

Mark merely turned to the table next to him, grabbing the bot and circuit board Tony had been trying to cram together.

Marching up to Tony, he slammed a hand onto his chest. Tony reflexively grabbed at it as he stumbled back, hearing Peter yell in the background. Stay down, kid, if you know what’s good for you, he thought.

Mark withdrew his hand and Tony found himself clutching the caminium arc reactor casing Mark had taken earlier.

“Let that legacy inspire you,” Mark said. “And get the specs right next time.”

Tony held the item with shaking hands as Mark left the room, Peter’s words from before flooding his mind. _It could be so much worse. Don__’t make it worse_. Well, no one was hurt, so had they actually played this right? Mark hadn’t made threats or pulled at the kid’s rib. Maybe they’d made the right move.

No. Because Mark was changing the rules again, demanding more of Tony than he could give. He’d stolen five days of work, said it wasn’t good enough to get them out.

“You know,” Peter said as he got to his hands and knees slowly, “he came to visit way less often before you got here. I think he likes you more than me.”

Tony crushed the urge to help the panting, feverish kid to his feet. Against the rules. Those damn rules. Peter swayed when he stood, grabbing onto a table before righting himself, and Tony lost it.

“Damn it!” he roared, hurling the arc reactor casing across the room. It clanged noisily off a cabinet, then fell to the ground, unharmed.

“Calm down,” Peter said. “We’ll think of something. You can make another bot.”

“What, so he can take that one too?” He should calm down—did this count as getting distracted?—but it was all so stupid and unfair. The kid had nailed it before. “The only things Mark wants are the only things I can’t give him! I can’t think of a single damn thing powerful enough to get us out of here that he won’t turn around and use to burn the world.”

“You’ll think of something.”

“Well, right now I’m thinking he can’t burn the world if I do make an Iron Man suit and blast him through on our way out.”

“You’ll think of something else,” Peter clarified. “Something other than killing him. You’re a genius.”

He was so naive, in more ways than one.

“I obviously thought that when I let them throw me in here, but now I’m not so sure!” Tony didn’t want to be yelling. Had been trying not to freak the kid out like he had the first day, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Maybe that was pure arrogance and adrenaline with nothing to back it up. If I were a genius, my tracking plan would have worked on day one. If I were a genius, I would be a goddamn doctor so I could actually help you right now!”

“You’ve done a fine job so far,” Peter said.

He’d walked back over to his station, and Tony didn’t have the heart to point out all the ways he was wrong. The blue fingernails. The cough. The unfinished stitches. The fever.

“You invented the arc reactor,” Peter continued. “That was genius.”

“Nope, wrong,” Tony said bitterly. “My father invented the arc reactor. It just got shoved in my face as the family legacy for fifteen years until I managed to miniaturize it. It was inevitable, not genius.”

“It was still a breakthrough. Plus you created a new element. Definitely genius material.”

The kid’s naive understanding of history would be endearing if it wasn’t Tony having to point out all the things he was missing.

“That was based purely on blueprints from Howard’s old stuff. I was just the manufacturer there. I’m just a well-trained monkey, kid. One who occasionally improvises, but apparently not when it’s important.

He shouldn’t be saying this. He should stay positive, encourage the kid. But their time line was condensing faster than Tony could accommodate. Peter’s rib wound wasn’t looking like pulverized meat anymore, but something else was wrong now. And if Tony couldn’t get them out before that came to a head…

Peter’s quiet voice drew him out of his panic.

“You invented Iron Man.”

And that had saved him once. But it hadn’t saved _them_.

“I didn’t know what it would cost.”

Everything and nothing.

“And you didn’t know what it would save. But things will be different this time, remember? Not Afghanistan.”

“I know, I know.” Tony ran a hand through his hair, clenching it in frustration. “It’s just…”

It was just about a hundred things that he couldn’t put to words right then, but Peter still nodded.

“Yeah, I get it. But we’ll figure it out.” He pointed to a thicker caminium sheet with a hole burned nearly all the way through. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll surprise Mark with the chemical goop he hates so much.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me one bit,” Tony said, smiling for the kid. “I don’t let just any idiot put their name next to mine on a patent.”

He wanted to go over and help the kid with his project when he turned back to it. Sitting idle was never his thing. He always fiddled around with one project or another, jumping off to his next great idea whenever inspiration struck him in the middle of the current project.

It meant lots of half-finished projects, but it also meant less time spent being bored, staring at walls while waiting for the next big idea to happen along. New ideas were always born from old ones.

But that was clearly out of the question, so Tony sat at his table, empty notebook in front of him, writing down whatever came to mind as the kid wheezed his way through the afternoon. His cheeks grew an even brighter red and the rate of his experiments slowed down considerably. Half the times Tony stole a glance at him, he had his eyes closed, either contemplating a complicated equation or pushing past some physical pain or other.

Tony tried to push Peter out of his mind—or at least to a back corner—and focus on his work, on his next big idea. Whatever that was going to be. Arc reactors as a power source were way too dangerous, but Tony was always thinking about a few new breakthroughs at any given time. What projects had he tabled recently that showed promise?

He’d been pumped about a nanotech idea a few months back, but he didn’t have the equipment here to really develop it. Or did he? He shouldn’t have been able to make that first Iron Man suit with the awful tech available to him. There had to be something here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter ("Pinned Down") is a short one, so expect it in a day or two!
> 
> Come yell with/at me on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.
> 
> As always, I'm still looking for recovery prompts for the follow-up story to this one. Let me know what you want to see!


	24. Pinned Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter sat up immediately, throwing the blankets off him, pushing Mark back to get to his feet. The world still swum around him, but he planted his feet with bent knees to ride it out. He had to get to the lab to help Mr. Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't wait! Here's the second shortest prompt in this story so far.

Peter wasn’t feeling so hot. Well, he was feeling too hot, shaking in the cool air of the room around him. He practically fell into bed once they reached the cell, dozing off as Mr. Stark changed his bandages again and forced a full cup of water from the lab into his hands.

His whole body ached, and he was exhausted from standing and shivering all day. Mr. Stark didn’t give him any painkillers though. There was still nearly half the bottle left, but Mr. Stark had to have a reason for holding off. It wasn’t like him to just forget a dose. Maybe he was saving them for later, anticipating that they’d be here longer now that his robot was destroyed. Or…for some other reason Peter was too tired to think about. There had to be a reason.

Peter’s experiments were verging on a breakthrough, but he was slowing down. A migraine that had made the numbers and letters smear together on the page the last hour hadn’t helped. But maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, he could probably finish a formula that would eat through caminium like acid in under a minute. They could burn through the rib shackles and the lock on the door and escape. Maybe he could even make some explosive grenades out of the chemical combinations he’d been avoiding to handle whatever was outside the doors. That way, when Mark rewound the tapes, he’d only find an explosive formula that he’d accidentally discovered and a chemical goo that would eat through his prized metal invention. Peter could live with that.

Tomorrow they’d escape. Or maybe the next day. He should probably tell Mr. Stark, but he was too tired. And too hot. And too achy.

Mr. Stark was saying something, maybe even asking Peter a question that required a response, but he had better things to do then talk right then, like sleep off whatever awful cold he’d gotten.

* * *

Peter’s spider sense woke him mere seconds before he felt the overwhelming urge to cough, which he did, then immediately regretted it. Geez, you didn’t think about how much coughing used your stomach muscles until they were still trying to pull themselves together. If he sneezed, he would be a goner. Especially if his spider sense was starting to warn him about coughs now.

He suppressed the next cough trying to push through, but it sat as a scratch in the back of his throat that no amount of throat-clearing would touch. Even that strained his core muscles each time he tried.

“Kid? You all right?”

He opened his eyes, but the room was still dark, and Mr. Stark’s voice was heavy with sleep like he’d just been woken up.

“Something in my throat,” Peter managed to croak. It sounded like he hadn’t talked in weeks.

“Sorry, but you drank all the water after dinner. Just try and cough it out.”

“Coughing hurts.”

He turned and saw Mr. Stark sitting up on the floor, one hand on his head.

“I know. Just go back to sleep, kid. We’ll get more water tomorrow.”

Sleep sounded like a better idea than water. Water would make him colder, and he was already freezing. He wanted hot chocolate. He wanted a heated blanket. He wanted super-powered ibuprofen to stop the deep ache that he’d thought should only be in his ribs but was now somehow everywhere. He wanted to go back to sleep.

* * *

The coughing/spider-sense combo woke Peter again. He immediately braced his stomach and suffered through three agonizing coughs before producing something gross and thick that he swallowed. It felt like there was more stuck in his throat or lungs or something, but he just couldn’t deal with the pain it would take to cough more up. 

Maybe if he just curled up under the sheets, his fever would melt it away. His whole body ached like it was melting away anyway.

“You awake again?” Mr. Stark’s voice didn’t sound tired this time.

Peter opened his eyes to the dark again, and turned toward Mr. Stark, which made the whole room spin. He closed his eyes again at the dizzying sight.

“I think so,” Peter said hoarsely, focusing on the slit of light under the door.

A hand patted the pillow next to his head, creeping over and resting on his forehead.

“Geez, you’re burning up, kid. Should’ve grabbed a thermometer to bring in here.”

"It’s dark. You can’t read it.”

“Maybe you could.”

“I do like reading,” Peter said, sleepily. He didn’t hear Mr. Stark respond.

* * *

A hand pulling through his hair woke Peter the third time. No spider sense.

“Wh—what are you doing?” he said warbly. The feeling of something stuck in his chest he had to breathe around was still there, but he was still too tired. Definitely too tired to cough it up. Or clear his throat. He tried swallowing, then when that didn’t work just breathed around it.

“Nothing. You were having a nightmare.”

Was he? He didn’t remember any nightmare. He didn’t remember much of anything beyond feeling weak and shaky, like warm taffy that had been pulled and pulled and left in a pile on the ground to cool. He’d seen an old-school taffy puller once with May. It hadn’t been this cold there though. Could you even pull taffy when it was this cold, or would the taffy freeze and shatter?

“I don’t know,” Mr. Stark said. “I’ve never been a fan of taffy myself.”

Mr. Stark could read minds now. That was cool. Maybe he could figure out what Mark really wanted from them when he inevitably stormed into the lab tomorrow.

* * *

When his spider sense woke him again and he opened his eyes, Peter couldn’t help but roll them. How was it still dark in here? It felt like he’d been stuck in this freezing, pitch-black night for at least a week already.

There was no urge to cough. Nothing signaling danger, just Mr. Stark sitting on the floor next to the bed, his head resting on folded arms on the mattress, fast asleep. He didn’t even have a blanket on, even thought he had to be cold too.

As if he knew Peter was looking at him, Mr. Stark sat up and smiled.

Then he reached behind his ear and pulled off a face cloaking device, revealing Mark’s grinning face.

Peter startled and pushed himself to his elbows, backing against the wall next to the bed despite the pain in his side. Well, that would explain the spider sense.

“Where’s Mr. Stark?” he asked, looking around the room frantically. It spun around him like a fun house as he snapped his head back and forth. “What did you do with him?”

“Oh, he’s working,” Mark said, standing up, rolling out his giant shoulders. “Where you should be. The day started two hours ago. Too bad he’ll have to miss meals again because of you. No work means no food. And since I can’t trust him not to share food with you again, he won’t get any either. I hope it was worth it.”

Peter sat up immediately, throwing the blankets off him, pushing Mark back to get to his feet. The world still swum around him, but he planted his feet with bent knees to ride it out. He had to get to the lab to help Mr. Stark.

“No! I didn’t mean to sleep. Open the door and I’ll work right now.”

He moved toward the door to show his intentions, but the chain caught painfully behind him. He must have moved too quickly and activated the seatbelt quick-lock feature Mark had warned him about. Definitely had to move slower next time.

“You missed your chance today, kid.” Mark had a hand on each of his shoulders pushing him back to the bed. Peter couldn’t believe he was weak enough that it was working.

“No! I told him not to bring me the oranges.” He ducked under Mark’s arms and stormed toward the door again, only to get stopped short at his ribs, this time with a flare of pain. He stood his ground at the edge of the chain’s current limits, then grabbed it with one hand and pulled. Why wasn’t it moving? “I won’t eat again if he brings me anything. At least feed him for working!”

“No. Just stay here and rest,” Mark said, this time shoving him harshly to the bed, forcing him onto his back. “He doesn’t need to eat anyway.”

“No, open the door and let me into the lab,” Peter shouted, struggling against his grip on his shoulders to rise again. “I’ll work! I need to work!”

Mark pinned him to the bed, a thick, hot forearm pressed against his chest, the other hand grabbing for Peter’s hands that were weakly trying to push him away.

“Damn it, just hold still, kid,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself. It’s just me.”

Peter looked up at the last statement, confused, just in time to see Mark’s stern visage morph back into Mr. Stark’s concerned face, but he hadn’t put anything on his face, hadn’t even had his hands near his face since he was busy holding Peter to the bed. Why the hell did he need Peter or Tony if he had that kind of technology? If he could shift faces just by thinking about it?

“How—How’d you do that?” Peter gasped. “You can’t just do that.”

“I didn’t do anything, now hold still. You’re going to rip your own damn ribs out if you don’t stop.”

Fake Mr. Stark was looming over him, the terror of it making it hard to breathe.

“No, you’re not really him. I know it’s you, Mark.”

A sudden tapping on his cheek stopped him short.

_C-H-L-O-R-I-N-E. C-H-L-O-R-I-N-E. C-H-L-O-R-I-N-E._

No.

Only Mr. Stark knew that code, and he already knew for a fact that this wasn’t him, had seen his face shift with his own eyes. Mark couldn’t have gotten it. Mr. Stark could never had told. Unless it had been tortured out of him. 

“You can’t know the code!” Peter cried. “We only used it twice.”

He fought back harder, landing one semi-solid punch to Mark’s cheek before his hand was pressed heavily to the mattress.

“I made the code with you, kid. It’s me,” the man said.

But Peter knew it wasn’t. Mr. Stark had been tortured for that information. Or he’d been tricked into telling it to a fake Peter. Either way he was in danger. Mark was hurting him or Fake Peter could hurt him and Real Peter had to find him, had to know if he was safe.

“Where’s Mr. Stark?” he yelled, feeling hot tears burn their way down his cheeks and into his ears.

Something came loose in his throat as he yelled, and he started coughing, which took all the fight right out of his system. It was blocking his throat and he needed to cough it out, but he needed to avoid coughing at all costs or he would unravel at the ribs, fall into a pile of taffy. Twenty second of gagging and clearing his throat shifted it to allow him to breathe somewhat clearly, if pretty noisily.

He relaxed back, every muscle shaking from the cold and from the exertion of trying to get past Mark, his vision blurring in and out as he cast his head around. He’d failed. He’d failed himself to work in the lab again. And he’d failed Mr. Stark. Mark had said he was working in the lab, but he would have had to use extreme measures to get that code from Mr. Stark. He wouldn’t be in any state for working. Or he was in danger from the fake Peter he’d given the code too.

Peter had to do better tomorrow. No, today. He had to wake up. He had to work. He had to…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come chat on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there. Ask me questions or request prompts and I'll see what I can do.


	25. Delirium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony had never seen anyone go downhill faster in his life. Maybe doctors saw shit like this all the time, but Tony was no doctor.

Tony had never seen anyone go downhill faster in his life. Maybe doctors saw shit like this all the time, but Tony was no doctor.

Sure, he’d known the kid was sick, had been exhausted and feverish for a day or two and woken himself up coughing, but full-on delirium? Had not even been on Tony’s radar. Which was more a criticism of his medical complications radar than anything else.

Tony stood over the bed in the dark cell breathing hard, forearm still pressed to Peter’s wheezing chest, one hand grasping one of Peter’s previously flailing wrists.

Now it was limp, and Tony was both relieved and terrified.

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes since the kid had woken up, shouting at Mark and asking him what he’d done with Mr. Stark. Which had scared the devil out of Tony, who couldn’t see a damn thing in the dark room. Mark could have actually been there for all he knew, ready with some night-vision goggles and some new evil plan.

But then Peter hadn’t recognized Tony, hadn’t responded to anything he said, replying instead to a completely different conversation only he could hear.

And yeah, the kid’s super hearing meant he could hear things Tony couldn’t, but when the loud shink of the chain pulling taut echoed through the room and Peter almost ripped his own ribs out trying to get to the lab through a door that was still closed by pulling against a chain that was still locked, Tony had realized he was delirious with fever.

It was a good thing the kid was too weak to really fight back when Tony had pushed him back to the bed, holding him down so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Well, it was a terrible thing, but it would have been worse to be delirious and at full strength. Silver linings and all that.

Giving the kid their code had been the opposite of helpful, only making him more frantic. Whatever his delirium was showing him had convinced him Tony wasn’t himself, and no code was proving otherwise. His cheek still smarted from the one punch Peter had managed to get off, even if Peter’s weakness had meant it had only had a fraction of the power behind it that it usually did. He was so agitated, Tony might have risked giving him more painkillers to calm him down—blue fingernails were better than two less ribs—but he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face, much less give a medical injection.

Tony released Peter’s limp wrist, straightening his other arm so he had a hand on Peter’s chest instead. He could feel the rise and fall of the kid’s breathing, but it was quick and wheezy. He took a minute to school his own rapid breathing. The kid was fine. Just one hell of a nightmare. He was just sleeping now, so no need to worry.

Tony had only gotten maybe three hours of interrupted sleep before Peter woke him up yelling, and he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep tonight, not if the kid was going to pull shit like that at a moment’s notice.

He found the chain with a wince and followed it gently to where it met up with the kid’s ribs. He poked around it gently, trying to feel if anything felt broken. Yet again, Tony cursed himself for not being a doctor. The metal underneath the skin felt so unnatural that it could have been broken bones for all he knew. But the kid wasn’t squirming in pain at the touch, so they couldn’t be too bad, right?

But as he withdrew his hand, he heard the kid start moving again, heard his heels scratching against the sheets, felt his chest start to shift under his palm.

He didn’t wake up. Instead, it was like an audio replay of the video call Mark had made not even a week ago. The kid was out of it again, not nearly peaceful enough to call it sleeping, tossing and turning.

The chain jangled and Tony reached blindly for the area, bumping into Peter’s left hand and loosening the kid’s grip on the chain.

He grabbed his hand firmly, pulling it across his chest to rest on Tony’s knee as he sat on the end of the bed.

What he wouldn’t give for a damn flashlight. Peter’s hand was slick with blood from the chain and burning with an incredible heat. Make that a flashlight and a digital thermometer.

Peter weakly tried to pull his hand away, but Tony kept a solid grip. Keeping the kid from grabbing the chain that was hurting him was all he could do.

Although, maybe it was uncomfortable to have your hand pulled over your chest when you were having trouble breathing. Tony shifted until he was sitting on the head of the bed, Peter’s hand stretched out and resting in Tony’s grip on the pillow above his head. As far from the damn spiked chain as he could manage.

The minutes whispered by. This was a nightmare if Tony had ever had one. Completely blind. The kid’s state left to his imagination. Except for the burning heat on his hand and forehead. Except for the rapid and shallow breaths that wheezed and whistled. Evidence the kid was alive, but in a sorry state. He needed something else to listen to or he was going to go mad.

So Tony talked.

He didn’t even really know what he was saying. Anything to feign a conversation and think about something besides what was right in front of him.

“We’ll get you out of here, kid. Just you wait. We’ll think of something. Something big and explosive that’ll be the next big breakthrough. Then everyone will want to know about it, and I’ll let you take the spotlight. You deserve it. You’re smart, kid. Maybe I was in college by your age, but you’ve got a leg up anyway because you’re good. I’m not leaving here without you. We’ll figure something out. One of us will find something. Or someone will find us. You’re too good to stay locked up here in a place like this. Life owes you, even if it’s terrible at giving people what they deserve.” If it was, Tony would have been snuffed out in some college rager before he ever had the chance to make Iron Man.

The talking seemed to soothe Peter a little, so Tony kept rambling.

“First thing we’re doing after we escape is takeout. We’ll get you about a dozen cheeseburgers to get you back up to size. Let me tell you, kid, _that_ is a good meal. It’ll be the best thing you’ve ever tasted. Nothing like a good kidnapping trip to make you appreciate greasy American food. The cheapest burger at McDonald’s will taste like fillet mignon. You’ve probably never had that, but it’s good. Really good. That can be our second meal if you want. We’ll take May and Michelle and Pepper with us. They’ll appreciate fine dining.”

Peter grew calmer as Tony rambled on. Almost listless after an hour or two, but Tony couldn’t stop talking, didn’t let go of his hand. It was something to do. Something other than think about all the things he didn’t know. All the things he could be doing wrong.

The lights came on.

Tony flinched and blinked away the sudden light, but Peter didn’t move.

When he could see clearly, Tony checked the kid’s fingernails, heart sinking when he saw they were an even deeper blue. His lips were starting to tint blue, too.

No way this was just an overdose problem. Peter had had one dose in the past 48 hours, so it couldn’t be that. The symptoms Cho had given him must be universal, must be caused by something else. The plague, if his horrendous coughing meant anything. Maybe the flu? Maybe pneumonia?

He didn’t know; he wasn’t a doctor, and he was starting to think that was his biggest mistake in a life full of them. All superheros should have to become doctors because they inevitably ended up in situations like this where not knowing a damn thing got people killed.

Peter’s left hand was scratched to hell from grabbing at the chain, the blood smeared around from Tony holding it. He pulled the kid’s shirt up and checked the rib shackle. It looked better in the light than it had felt in the dark. Little smudges of blood were left on the skin from Tony checking it out the first time with blood from Peter’s cuts on his hands, but the rib cage looked more or less the same as usual.

Peter’s already thin face seemed painfully angular in the harsh light here, but he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He breathed steadily, a slight rasp shaking each inhale and exhale. Not in pain right now, but not good. He couldn’t take much more. Tony didn’t have to be a doctor to see that.

With the lights on, they should have about ten minutes before the door rolled up to signal it was time to start working in the lab.

And Tony didn’t know what he was going to do.

Lab or cell?

He held Peter’s hand in his as he thought. The kid obviously wasn’t working in the lab today. He probably wouldn’t wake up even if Tony tried, never mind be coherent or steady enough to do any actual work. So if the kid was staying here again for the day, should Tony get back to inventing when the door rolled open or stay in here and make sure the kid didn’t lose more ribs to his delirium?

Lab or cell?

In the lab, he could maybe sneak the kid a little more food, but he’d been yelling about being sorry for eating the oranges, saying he wouldn’t eat anything else. The kid would likely refuse more food when he woke up. It had probably tipped off Mark too, so the odds of Tony being able to sneak food again wasn’t good.

He wouldn’t be much help to the kid in there, but at least in here he could hold the kid down if he got bad again, get him a glass of water if he woke up, maybe try the wet rag on the forehead thing for his fever, unless that only worked in movies. Tony was willing to try anything at this point.

_It could be worse_, Peter’s words echoed in his head._ Don__’t make it worse. Stop messing with his rules._

He’d meantMark’s main rule, that he not get distracted by the kid. And Tony had tried. He’d ignored possible broken ribs, coughing attacks, a burning fever, and loathed every second about it. This was different though. This was life and death. He wasn’t going to sit by helplessly.

_You should_.

Yeah, he knew what Peter would say. He’d already said it. More than once, in fact.

_You should be willing to pay that cost. __Plenty of things are more important than me_.

Peter had never had great self-preservation skills. Most kids didn’t. That’s what adults were for. To pick up that slack. To stop them from paying more than they could afford.

Tony had been awful at that lately, at Peter’s insistence. He’d been sacrificing the short-term for the long-term, letting Peter suffer on his own in the short-term so they could craft an escape for the long-term. But if things kept up like this, Peter wouldn’t make it to the long-term. They were running out of time.

Lab or cell?

If he went to work in the lab, he might be able to produce a more permanent solution by finding them an escape strategy, but any plan he could come up with was days away from fruition. He could maybe pull together some riskier explosive stuff he wouldn’t have bothered with before, but even that wasn’t a full escape plan because Peter was still chained. And now Tony would have to carry him if they ran.

Peter’s chemical stuff had looked pretty close to usable for melting chains and door locks, but Tony had no idea what he’d been doing, thanks to Mark’s rules about not getting distracted. It would take hours for him to catch up so he could pick up where Peter left off, and that was assuming Mark would even let him. Tony would put money on Mark raging in after five minutes to redirect Tony’s work back to the forge any way he could.

_You__’re not scared of this guy, and it’s hurting us both. _Peter’s words floated into his head._ He__’ll always do what he says, and then he’ll do worse the next time. Of course he’s going to separate us if I’m distracting you. We should have seen that coming._

Well he could see it coming now, but he couldn’t do anything about it. If he got distracted, Mark was going to take the kid away for longer, maybe keep him further away than this cell because he was still distracting Tony here. And if the kid disappeared, if he didn’t know how he was doing or if he was even alive? Unacceptable. If Mark took the kid away, he could die. He could die and Tony would have no idea.

_It doesn_ _’t matter. Get back to work._

He held Peter’s palm in both hands, pressing the kid’s warm knuckles to his bowed forehead as he thought.

It did matter. It was the only thing that did. He’d followed Peter’s orders before because they’d made sense, but they didn’t anymore.

_You_ _’ve got to follow the rules, even if they’re stupid and you think they’ll hurt me. He’ll hurt me worse than his rules._

The rules had led to this, and the only worse thing Tony could think of in this state would lead to death.

Lab or cell?

He knew which one Mark wanted him to do, what Peter would want him to do. But Mark was a psychopath and Peter wasn’t in his right mind.

What did Tony want to do? What could he get away with? What choice wouldn’t he be able to live with?

Lab or cell?

The door rolled up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any guesses what Tony's going to do? He's got a pretty hard decision in front of him...
> 
> It'll probably be a week until I can get the next chapter up since it's a longer one. Pretty sure it'll be the "Broken Voice" prompt.
> 
> Here's an in-depth explanation of why I went with rib shackles for this story on [my Tumblr](https://theassay.tumblr.com/post/190395435280/dont-know-if-you-answered-this-on-one-of-your), if anyone's interested. A lot of people seem curious about that.


	26. Broken Voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He kept his eyes on Peter. The kid was perfectly still, rasping with every breath. He probably wasn’t going to deliriously throw himself from the bed again, but this was almost worse. His chest barely moving, his fingernails and lips blue, his frame skeletal, his skin feverish.
> 
> Tony felt like he was standing vigil, just waiting for the worst, like he’d done with Jarvis through the night all those years ago, through almost two nights, as Jarvis’s hand had grown cold and stiff. In that way, the heat from Peter’s palm was almost a comfort. This was different. The kid wasn’t dead yet.
> 
> The door beeped behind him as the code was typed into the lock. Ten minutes. Mark was right on schedule. Tony straightened shoulders that had naturally hunched over the kid, steeling his mind for the confrontation.
> 
> Don’t make it worse.

Lab.

Then cell.

Tony wandered among the lab tables, hyper-aware of the kid he’d left alone behind him. If everything went according to plan, Peter wouldn’t be alone for long.

Tony predicted he’d have about ten minutes of work time in the lab alone before Mark got suspicious about Peter not joining him and came to investigate. That meant ten minutes of the door between the lab and the cell being open. Ten minutes to move supplies from one to the other.

Less if Tony acted suspiciously.

Rather than take several trips in and out of the cell, Tony made a small pile on one of the stools. A bowl and a few clean rags. Two jars of water. A thermometer. Four syringes. A flashlight. Anything he could think of that might help Peter, might help him help Peter.

Seeing the items all collected brought back the same sinking feeling of inadequacy Tony had faced while grabbing the painkillers and bandages on his race out of the Tower to the helicopter. This makeshift med kit wasn’t much better.

With three minutes left, Tony dragged the stool and everything on it back to the still-lit cell, where a still-listless Peter sill lay on the bed.

Mark would know something was up now. This was clearly getting distracted. Blatant rule-breaking. The kid would be losing it if he were conscious.

But he wasn’t. He was down for the count. Out of commission.

So Tony was taking a risk. He wasn’t setting foot in the lab again until Mark got the kid to a doctor. Or a doctor to the kid. Tony wasn’t picky.

He had a few plans Mark might go along with once he realized Tony wasn’t giving him another minute of work with the kid on death’s door. He might come storming in, but he’d have no choice but to be furious at Tony rather than Peter if he wanted anything to change.

Tony just had to keep the situation under control until they could negotiate. He had to figure out how he could leverage the only thing he could offer—his brain and his hands—to get Peter taken care of. And since Peter couldn’t give him intel on Mark’s behavior anymore, he had to figure out for himself the best way to play this game so that both of their pieces made it to the home base. And that meant holding back the snark and sarcasm that was bound to irritate Mark.

A part of Tony really wanted to wait by the door with the biggest hammer he could find, waiting to brain Mark when he came in, but the cameras would catch him. And if Tony escalated things to physical attacks, Mark’s first move would be to reach for the remote he always had on him.

Mark was huge, was used to physical labor, and wasn’t running off of prison rations. He had the clear upper hand in any close-quarters fight they might find themselves in. Especially since Tony would have to protect the kid at the same time. If Tony attacked outright, his odds of victory weren’t great, weren’t acceptable if they left his unconscious teammate helpless.

Tony wasn’t going to start anything, but if Mark went for the remote control to mess with that damn chain, he was going to find out just how effective a syringe could be as a melee weapon and just what super-powered painkillers did to a regular-powered person. Tony was willing to bet a full syringe—3 mls—injected into any large muscle would be enough to knock their captor out. Maybe even kill him. Once again, Tony wasn’t picky.

But the jury was still out if Tony would be able to dose him before Mark pummeled him, even if Tony had the element of surprise, which was why this was a backup plan. An emergency plan. For use only if everything else blew up.

Hiding his hands from the cameras, Tony prepped his surprise weapons, drawing out 3 mls each into two syringes. He slipped one into his pocket and laid the other on the bed where it was partially concealed by blankets but within easy reach.

The rest of supplies got pushed under the head of the bed where they wouldn’t be accidentally knocked over. And where Mark might forget about them, although that was a long shot.

Tony pushed the stool against the wall, where he could sit on it and hold Peter’s hand while keeping a good view of the cell door.

But for now, he kept his eyes on Peter. The kid was perfectly still, rasping with every breath. He probably wasn’t going to deliriously throw himself from the bed again, but this was almost worse. His chest barely moving, his fingernails and lips blue, his frame skeletal, his skin feverish.

Tony felt like he was standing vigil, just waiting for the worst, like he’d done with Jarvis through the night all those years ago, through almost two nights, as Jarvis’s hand had grown cold and stiff. In that way, the heat from Peter’s palm was almost a comfort. This was different. The kid wasn’t dead yet.

The door beeped behind him as the code was typed into the lock. Ten minutes. Mark was right on schedule. Tony straightened shoulders that had naturally hunched over the kid, steeling his mind for the confrontation.

_Don_ _’t make it worse. _

“Wish me luck, kid,” he whispered, and the door swung open.

Tony kept a reassuring grip on Peter’s right hand as he turned to see Mark, looming in the doorway. He wasn’t wearing his usual leather smithing apron over his clothes for once. His massive shoulders were nearly bursting out of a plan black t-shirt, and his soot-stained jeans, hands casually hanging out of the pockets, made him look oddly…average.

Tony bit back a joke about casual Fridays that was just begging to be made. Focus. Start a civil conversation. Figure out how this guy works so you can work around it. Figure out how you can change the “don’t get distracted” rule enough to keep the kid alive.

“You should be working, Stark,” Mark said first, right to the point. “You won’t get any food without work.” A flicker of flint behind his eyes hinted at a growing anger, but at least he wasn’t smashing things yet. Just mild threats.

“And you won’t get any work until he gets a doctor,” Tony said, returning the firm eye contact. Technically, that was a threat too, but he needed it to sound inevitable. Just another rule. One that could stand against Mark’s rules.

Mark stepped into the room, moving closer to the bed, studying the figure stretched out on it. Tony tensed, but didn’t move. If he seemed overly defensive, it would likely make Mark more offensive.

“He’s dying.” Mark’s words were half-question, half-observation. And not at all worried.

“I know,” Tony said, pressing down the panic that fact frothed in his stomach. “That’s why he needs a doctor.”

“Pneumonia, if I had to guess,” Mark said lightly, like he was noting the weather instead of a possibly deadly medical condition. “I hear it’s common when certain risk factors are present, like traumatic injury to one or more ribs.” He cocked his head at Tony, a smile playing in one corner of his mouth. “That and regular opioid painkiller usage.”

Don’t take the bait. Don’t tell him to to go to hell. Don’t feel guilty for treating the kid’s pain. Whether or not that was a risk factor, Tony wasn’t going to let guilt about his role in this fester into a distraction. Not right now when Mark so clearly wanted it to.

“Modern medicine means that doesn’t have to be a death sentence these days,” Tony said steadily.

“You’d be surprised,” Mark shook his head and sighed almost fondly. “Our little spider. Barely alive and still such a distraction.”

Time for plan number one.

“He’d be less of a distraction if he weren’t dying,” Tony said. “Go get one of the doctors you keep around here. They’ll get him up and working in no time. He’ll be a good assistant.”

“They’re not on retainer anymore,” Mark said. “We’re anticipating a large-scale facility move very soon, and they were the first to be dismissed.”

That was news. Were he and Peter going to be packed up and shipped out with the rest of the cargo or was their time line even shorter now?

Either way, if Mark didn’t have any doctors here to summon, it was time to move on to the next plan.

“Then get him out of here. If you think he’s such a distraction, get him away from me. If I know he’s somewhere safe, I’ll stop worrying. Drop him off at the nearest hospital. Hell, drop him off at a motel and send my people the location and they’ll take him off your hands. Then I can really get to work.”

“A lovely thought,” Mark said, “but he’s far too principled to be allowed to live after he turned me down.”

Wait, what? If that meant what Tony thought it did, then things were worse than he’d thought. Always worse. _He could still find a way to make it worse. _He’d thought Mark was apathetic to the kid, annoyed maybe, or disappointed. The sort of reactions that meant he wouldn’t bother saving him because it was inconvenient or he wasn’t feeling like it. But if he actively wanted the kid dead, then Tony’s win conditions just got a whole lot harder to achieve.

“What the hell is that supposed mean?” Tony demanded.

“I thought we could work together,” Mark said, his gaze turning back to Peter. “But he turned down my offer. Showed me pretty quickly that he’s an idealist, and I can’t work with those. If he lives, if he goes free, he’ll make it his heroic mission to tear down this organization. He’ll end up dead anyway, but I’m saving us all a few headaches by dealing with it now.”

Organization? Not just one crazy, albeit well-connected person? That was also news.

Mark turned and walked toward the bookshelf, drawing his right hand out of his pocket, but the other one remained. When he turned again, leaning against the bookshelf slightly, Tony could see his left hand fidgeting in his pocket. The remote. It had to be. Tony’s eyes widened at the implication that he was thinking about using it, subconsciously or not. He pulled himself back to the conversation before Mark could act on the veiled threat.

“So you’re letting him die because you’re worried he’ll come after you once he’s free?”

“Essentially.”

He really thought the kid was a threat. A bigger threat than Iron Man apparently. Tony wasn’t sure if he felt proud of the kid or personally offended. 

“Yet you don’t seem to be worried about Iron Man tracking you down,” Tony noted, “which is odd, since I wouldn’t be as nice as the kid about it.”

“Are you sure?” Mark asked. “Anyone can see you’ve given up your killer instincts to align with his merciful side.” He flicked the photo of Pepper on the shelf next to him. “You’re persuadable, changeable, forgeable. That’s why you’ve always been the target. I can work with you. The boy just distracted me for a while. He’s quite good at that, so I know what you’ve been up against in the lab.”

“You don’t know a damn thing.”

The aggressive tone slipped out unbidden. Tony liked to think that he’d changed, but not if that meant any old villain thought he was some chameleon who adapted to any backdrop.

“Of course I know,” Mark said, standing up straight, right hand fisted at his side like a warning, a threat. “Do you think I’m a novice? Weak? Unobservant? Crazy? This whole lab is a carefully constructed forge. A crucible. It tells me everything I need to know of the true mettle of the men inside, tells me when I’ve found metal worth working and when I’ve found dross to dispose of.”

Tony’s grip on Peter’s hand tightened. He wasn’t dross. He wasn’t trash to be throw out. He was the best of them. And if Mark couldn’t see that…

“Of course you’re crazy,” Tony said, pushing down the urge to jump to his feet to make his point. “How can you just sit by and let someone die?”

Mark shrugged. “He’s not my first. Nor yours.” He flicked the binder on the shelf this time, the “Life and Works of Tony Stark” collection he and Peter had been ignoring. It tipped over with a thump.

Tony’s arms stiffened at the implication, his breath catching in his throat with a tiny gasp. Not Mark’s first? Just who were they dealing with?

Mark sighed in annoyance as he approached the bed again. “Keep your judgment to yourself. I can’t give you an answer that would satisfy you, and I’m not going to try. I don’t answer to you. You’re not God, Tony Stark. You’re not my jury or my judge or my executioner.”

“That last position hasn’t been filled yet, so I wouldn’t be so sure,” Tony nearly growled before catching himself. No threats. Don’t escalate. Just negotiate.

But Mark just chuckled. “Empty threats. And what would young Peter say to that idea? Tony Stark reverting to his old, murderous ways?”

Mark took a final step to the bed, then sat down at the foot of it. Tony’s brain screamed at him because Mark was right next to the kid, literally had a hand on his lower shin over the blankets like he cared whether he lived or died. Adrenaline flooded his system and it was suddenly harder to breathe.

Tony’s right hand snaked forward and curled around the loaded syringe under a fold of blankets, but Tony couldn’t attack, couldn’t start a war unless he was sure there was no other option, especially with Mark so close to the kid. And Mark wasn’t actively threatening the kid right now, aside from his entire presence being a general threat. He needed to relax, get more information, not start something he couldn’t win.

“What was it the kid said?” Mark asked conversationally as Tony was trying to unclench his jaw and breathe somewhat normally again. “_Plenty of things are more important than me. You should be willing to pay that cost_. He wanted you to be a hero more than he wanted to live.”

He patted the kid’s shin almost affectionately, and it took everything in Tony not to leap off the bed and punch Mark in the face before jabbing him with the syringe. He didn’t deserve a single moment of this facade of caring, not when he was planning on letting the kid die while standing in the same room.

“You’re twisting it,” Tony said through gritted teeth. “Twisting everything.”

“You think I’m wrong? You think if I gave you a gun and a choice to shoot either him or a stranger off the streets, he wouldn’t beg you to kill him?”

Of course he would, but that wasn’t what this was. And what Peter would want and what Tony would do weren’t necessarily the same either.

“Don’t,” Tony ground out. “Don’t confuse this with those damn philosophical theoreticals.”

He didn’t want to debate over the kid, least of all over his unconscious body.

“The theoretical is all that _can_ be trusted,” Mark said. “Trolley problems. The utility monster. Lifeboat ethics. Roko’s basilisk. The problems you encounter in theory are the reason morals aren’t worth picking sides over. They’re why morality will always be a pile of theories and never a cohesive lifestyle.” Mark leaned toward Tony, still keeping a firm hand on Peter’s shin at his side, speaking slowly. “But if things are confusing to you, let me make them clear. In the lab, the boy’s a distraction. Out there, he’s a threat. Dead, he’s neither.” He leaned back again, sizing Tony up as if watching for a reaction. “I’m afraid there’s nowhere for out little spider to run now.”

That did make things clear. Crystal clear. Clear enough to cut through all of Tony’s plans except the last plan. The worst plan. The plan Mark seemed to have forgotten.

There was one place where Peter didn’t have to be any of those things, where he wouldn’t be a distraction or free or dead. One horrific place left.

He couldn’t believe he was about to say the words, but he had nothing else. Peter had nothing else. He couldn’t even look Mark in the eyes as he spoke. Couldn’t look at Peter either so he kept his eyes on the floor as he betrayed Peter completely. Betrayed him to save his life.

“You said there were biologists who wanted him. In that video call. _More useful as a spider_.” His voice broke as he spoke the words that had nearly sent him into a panic attack that day, at the words that hinted at unethical experiments and sterile cells and unscrupulous scientists. But whatever ethics they lacked, even they couldn’t get around the fact that they needed a living subject in fairly good health in order to study his powers. They needed him alive, and Mark didn’t anymore. “Sell him to them,” he said, broken voice betraying him again. “They’ll keep him alive and away from all this. You can’t get to him and he can’t get to you.”

Mark’s wide eyes and raised eyebrows showed his shock clearly, and shame flooded Tony’s chest, his shoulders curling inward. He was out-villaining the villain with this move.

But if it kept the kid alive, it would be worth it. Survival first. Rescue later. Once Tony escaped this hellhole, he’d find the kid again, he’d do better this time, he’d save him from that cave of horrors like he hadn’t been able to from this one. An image of Peter’s corpse, dissected and splayed on a table intruded on his thoughts and he flinched back. They’d learn more with him alive. Any scientist would see that. They had to.

“You surprise me, Stark,” Mark said. “It’s a tempting idea, but don’t think you’d be getting a cut of the sale just for bringing that option to my attention.”

“Keep the money,” Tony spat, still unable to make eye contact, all his energy devoted to keeping back a long stream of curses he wanted to yell at the man.

“A generous offer,” Mark said with a small smile. “They _were_ quite interested when I mentioned his abilities and age to them over drinks recently. Seemed to think he was well worth studying.”

A shiver of horror worked its way up Tony’s spine. He had nothing more to add to this idea. Couldn’t stomach thinking about it for another second.

“However, circumstances have changed.” Mark looked honestly disappointed at the fact. “The specimen is in such bad condition I doubt they’d want him anymore. And I couldn’t tarnish my reputation by offering such damaged merchandise.” He shook Peter’s leg gently as if to make his point and the kid moaned a little, throwing his face to the side before settling again.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut as his chin sunk to his chest. Merchandise? His reputation? Had he ever had a chance if that’s how Mark viewed the kid? That was the last of his deals, gone. Even a deal that Tony could barely stomach, was regretting he’d ever brought up, even _that_ couldn’t sway Mark.

“Then what the hell was point of any of this?” Tony hissed through clenched teeth, a dangerous, wet heat building behind his eyes.

“You.”

The frustration only built, and Tony snapped his eyes open.

“No. You didn’t have to involve him. You could have just gone after me.”

“I could have, but I’m glad I didn’t. In the end he’s given me a much better understanding of you.”

In the end? This wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. Maybe it was time to move to threats. Or to a physical attack. Tony’s muscles tensed around the syringe even as he tried to visibly relax his shoulders. If that was his game, he couldn’t give it up too early. He’d only have one shot at this.

“He’s a perfect example of how changeable you are, Stark. Him and Yinsen, both. They’re clouding your judgment, changing your ideals, all without you even noticing.” Tony’s chest tightened at the reminder that Mark had cameras everywhere, had heard every word of comfort and advice and history he’d given to Peter. He knew more about his time in Afghanistan than anyone in the world now, give or take about five people. “You used to be Oppenheimer,” Mark continued loudly. He was nearly ranting now, but he was still hyper-focused on Tony’s resentful stare, as if judging how his propagandizing was landing. Tony wouldn’t be able to get the jump on him right now. “You tried to distance yourself from death with Iron Man. You changed yourself to fit into the world of so-called self-sacrificial heroes like your dear Yinsen. And then the idealistic Spider-Man comes along and worms his way into your work and changes you again. He’s taken you further from your life’s calling than ever before. He’s a distraction to people like us.”

“You don’t know my life’s calling,” Tony ground out. He wasn’t even sure of it anymore. This morning it had been keeping the kid safe, but now it seemed he couldn’t even do that. “You and Oppenheimer can keep your god complexes to yourselves. I’ll never be like you.”

“I don’t want you to be like me,” Mark said, still keeping an unnervingly consistent stare on Tony, whose fingers hurt from clutching the syringe so tightly. “I want you to be like _you_. True to your nature. You may be blind to it, but anyone can see that your nature is death. Our natures are the same, even if our current morals don’t line up. Keep your morals. I never said otherwise. But don’t push them on the people around you. Don’t make your moral standards an arbitrary bar people need to reach in order for you to deign to help them, or let them help you. And most of all, don’t accept morals that others push on you. They’ll weaken you. Dull your killer’s edge like this one has.” Tony could see his grip on Peter’s leg tighten, and his own chest tightened along with it. “You shouldn’t have let Afghanistan change you, and you shouldn’t have let Spider-Man change you.” He paused, then laughed as if he were amused at something he’d said. “If anything, that’s the part of Spider-Man you should try and emulate. All my efforts haven’t changed him at all.”

Were they looking at the same kid? Because he was down two ribs and more scared than Tony had ever seen him in his life. He’d lost a bit of spark. Just not the one that forced him to do what he thought was right.

“He’s never needed changing,” Tony said. “And he could never change the worst things about me. He’ll never convince me that people like you don’t deserve to die.”

Maybe Mark was right about a few things. Maybe Tony’s nature was death. Always had been. The family legacy. But he didn’t have to like it, even when he fell back into it. He’d happily use that nature to kill Mark if it kept him from using it even more.

Mark stood abruptly, pushing off of Peter’s legs and looking disgusted. He only made it a few steps before turning back sharply. “He already _has_ convinced you. I see your rage, Stark. But I heard you fighting with the boy that first day, the day you found out the lengths I went to in order to keep him here. You threatened to kill me for it, and Spider-Man defended me.” He pointed angrily at Peter. “Are you willing to push past Spider-Man one day just to get to me?”

Easily.

“I’ll do whatever I need to in order to save him. Or to avenge him. Even if he’d hate me for it.” His grip on Peter’s hand was nearly bruising now, so he forced himself to relax, to speak the next words as a cold promise instead of a burning threat. “What I need right now is for you to understand that if he dies here because of you, whatever future I have will be dedicated to tracking you down and stopping your heart. Maybe I’ll be kinder to whoever else is in this organization, maybe they’ll just go to jail, but not you. I’ll be the last thing you ever see.”

Mark was right. Peter wouldn’t approve of this. But he was wrong about Tony caring. Peter and Tony weren’t the same person—never had been and definitely couldn’t afford to be now.

“You’d do that and then go home,” Mark said, shaking his head in disbelief as he spoke, “then sit on Mr. Find-another-way-no-matter-what’s grave, and tell him what you did? Would that change anything after he was already gone?”

“I wouldn’t lose a single night’s sleep over it.” A dozen other things about this situation might cost him sleep in the near future, but killing Mark wasn’t one of them. He leaned forward a little on his stool, partly for the intimidation factor, partly so he’d be able to leap off it faster if things came down to it.

“You’re deceiving yourself, Stark.” Mark’s voice was sharper now. His jaw worked overtime to spit out his furious words. “Admit what the boy has made you and stop grasping for weapons you’ll never wield. Focus on your work, not the fantasy of revenge you’ll never be able to maintain in the face of the boy’s ceaseless morals.”

Revenge was anything but a fantasy. Not something he was afraid to wield. And this was not the time for subtly any longer.

“Help him, or I’ll kill you.”

Blunt, but that’s really what this came down to, wasn’t it? The one thing that could make Mark more afraid of Iron Man coming after him than of Spider-Man taking apart his operation after the fact.

But Mark didn’t look scared, only angrier, his face darkening, the cords on his neck standing out as he railed. “You’re wrong, and I’ll prove it! I’ll prove how weak you are. I’ll destroy this illusion you have that you’re still the same bringer of death you were before Afghanistan. You could be again, but you’re too weak now, which is why I’m here to change you back. Which is why I’ll kill him and you’ll watch.”

He jerked his left hand out of his pocket, clutching the remote, and moved toward the head of the bed, a shaking hand outstretched toward Peter.

Tony was in motion before he’d made it two steps, pulling the syringe from underneath the blankets and throwing himself at Mark. The stool clattered to the ground behind him as his left shoulder struck Mark’s chest, knocking the blacksmith onto the floor with a heavy gasp, Tony nearly on top of him.

He jammed the syringe into Mark’s shoulder, straight through the sleeve of the t-shirt, fumbling to get a grip on the depressor with shaking hands and a writhing victim.

It depressed mere micrometers before Mark’s thick hand wrapped around Tony’s wrist, twisting it viciously to keep his hand away from the syringe. Tony was forced along with the motion as Mark threw his strength to that arm, planting it on Tony’s chest and flipping him over to smack against the foot of the bed.

Mark released his wrist to reach over and wrench the body of the syringe out of his arm, throwing it across the room, leaving the glinting needle behind. He looked at the remote in his left hand, maneuvering it to be able to push the buttons.

Tony barely had his hands and knees back under him, but that didn’t stop him from throwing himself at Mark again. The second syringe was still deep in his pocket, but he had to get that remote _now_. He grabbed the arm with both hands and pried at the fingers, ignoring the punches Mark was slamming into his rib cage.

Mark’s fingers were shaking as Tony scrabbled at them, but then they were opening, more easily than Tony had thought they would. Maybe those painkillers had create some effect after all.

He pulled the remote into the cage of his own hands just as Mark pulled his feet up, planted them on Tony’s unguarded stomach—this guy was more flexible than any overly-muscled blacksmith had a right to be—and launched Tony across the room, knocking the wind out of him before he’d even landed.

Not that the landing was any better. His head and one shoulder slammed against the far wall before he slid to the ground, leg tangling in the toppled stool.

His ears were ringing, vision blacked out hopefully temporarily, and his chest heaved as he tried to draw air into stunned lungs.

But he still held the remote tightly in his hand.

Fully expecting Mark to get up swinging at either him or Peter, Tony braced himself against the wall behind him and dragged himself to his feet, kicking the fallen stool to the side, out of the way.

When Mark’s voice rang out, he was breathing hard, but far away, and the rage had dropped away. The room had changed to blurs as Tony shook his head, trying to clear his vision further.

“You surprised me again, Stark.”

He reached out a half-blind hand to grab Peter’s shoulder, reassuring himself that the kid was fine. Well, at least wasn’t any worse off from Mark’s attack. He could see now that Peter had barely moved a muscle. And that Mark was keeping his distance across the room. He plucked the needle from the syringe from his shoulder, throwing it to the ground and rubbing at the spot of blood it had left behind.

Tony stepped forward between Mark and Peter, air finally starting to come back to him, and he gasped, spitting out threats through his adrenaline-crazed lizard brain, “You miscalculated, you bastard…You touch him…and I’ll kill you…I’ll do it…Don’t think for one second I won’t.”

Mark clutched his left shoulder, clenching and unclenching the fingers on that hand as if testing them. “I thought…but you kept ranting about how he was the hero mold and how you couldn’t work with someone who didn’t share a moral code with you. I assumed you and he would match. I thought I’d have to convince you that you didn’t have to be the same.” His voice had quieted, almost like he was thinking things through for himself and Tony and Peter just happened to be in the same room. His gaze was unfocused, glued somewhere on the wall above the bed. “And then the boy was so solid and unmovable in his belief that no one deserved death that I realized it had to have been you who had changed to match him. I thought his young idealism had tempered your rage, cooled your need for death and revenge in a way that might let us live in this world together afterward even without an alliance, whether or not the boy died.”

His gaze slid over to Tony who met it fearlessly, silently.

“But he hasn’t changed you. Not nearly as much as I’d thought. Somehow you’ve kept your killer’s morals even in your alliance with him.” A curious smile crept onto his face. “There’s iron left in you yet, Stark. That or you are far less attached to the boy than I’ve been led to believe.”

Enough of this psycho-analysis garbage.

“Whatever,” Tony said. “If all you’re going to take away from this is that I mean every threat I make, then sure, go with that. I’ll kill you unless you help him.”

Mark nodded slowly. “I should have known. What did you say that first day to the boy? _Maybe saving heroes like you is worth becoming a villain over_.” He let go of his shoulder, straightening up and dropping his hands loosely at his sides. “Let’s deal. I have no desire to meet Tony stark as my executioner one day. I assume you have a proposal in mind with your cooperation and his safety as two of the conditions?”

The shift in tone was startling, but it felt surprisingly good to have Mark more scared of Iron Man than he was of the kid. It was time to play that for all it was worth.

Mark raised his eyebrows expectantly, and Tony held the remote in his hand high in the air. “First of all, I’m keeping this. No more yanking on the kid’s ribs. In fact, we’re cutting that chain right now, first thing after we agree on the deal.”

“And what _is_ the rest of the deal?”

What indeed? What could Tony suggest that Mark wouldn’t reject out of hand but that would get the kid the help he needed?

“Moving day. You said you were prepping for a move to a new facility?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Currently in three days’ time, but that could be pushed to thirty-six hours if incentives are good enough.”

“Okay. Thirty-six hours. I’m coming with you, and you’re leaving the kid here. He won’t know where we go and won’t be in any condition to follow. He gets medical treatment starting now. Then in thirty-six hours, right before we leave, I get to send an email to my private server with this location, a summary of Peter’s condition, and a request for immediate medical attention. No tricks, no mentions of you, you can check it over before I send it. Once I’m absolutely positive that goes through, we leave and they can come and get him. And you leave all the doors unlocked so rescuers can clear the building and find him faster.”

Mark barely nodded once before responding.

“What kind of medical treatment?”

“I don’t know. Whatever he needs. I’m not a doctor.”

“Neither am I, but we’re the only ones here,” Mark said. He was talking quickly now, like he was suddenly in a rush. “What should I send for? Give me your demands.”

Think fast, think fast. What did Tony know about pneumonia? What had he picked up from Helen on visits to the med bay?

“IV for antibiotics, hydration, and nutrients,” Tony listed. “Continuous oxygen through a mask. Whatever medicine gets fevers down. And as much food and water as he can stomach when he wakes up.” That ought to do it. He could last 36 hours with that. Oh, one more thing. “And I get to keep the stuff under the bed until then.”

“It’s a deal. I’ll have that here in four hours. We’ll set up the medical care and that’s when you say your goodbyes, Stark.”

As Mark agreed, Tony couldn’t help but recall similar promises for freedom made to him in Afghanistan. _If you do this for them, he will let you go free,_ Yinsen had translated.

And Tony had immediately understood.

_No, they won_ _’t._

Yinsen had confirmed.

_No, they won_ _’t._

Was this promise any different? Could it be trusted? Did he have a choice? Peter had told him at least a half dozen times, _This isn__’t Afghanistan, Mr. Stark_. But to what extent?

What else had the kid said?

_He_ _’ll always do what he says, and then he’ll do worse the next time. _

_He was so calm about it. And I decided then that he meant every word that he said. Nothing is idle. _

Did that only apply to threats? Had the kid experienced promises and deals with Mark as well, or were his experiences too one-dimensional?

Mark moved to the door, stopping only when Tony called out.

“What about the chain? That comes off now.”

“Use an angle grinder from the lab,” he said, waving a hand dismissively over his shoulder. “You have permission. I have calls to make.”

Then he was gone, locking the door to the hallways behind him, leaving the wall to the lab rolled up and the remote to the rib chain in Tony’s trembling hand.

Tony sank onto the edge of the bed behind him, wrapping one arm around the bruised ribs Mark had pummeled as he calmed his racing heart now that the main threat had left.

That had gone…surprisingly okay, actually. Maybe they’d even advanced a few moves in whatever game Mark was playing. More importantly, they were about to get a piece to the home base, to safety.

Tony’s right wrist still twinged, and his head and shoulder hurt from where he’d hit the wall, but at least Peter was okay. Well, not okay, but at least he wasn’t any worse off from having Mark in the room. There was a light at the end of the tunnel for him.

Tony pushed himself to his feet and grabbed the angle grinder from the lab, plugging it into the closest outlet and and dragging it over to the bed in the cell. It was infuriating that they’d had this tool—the technical ability to free Peter—the whole time. The only think stopping them had been Mark and the thickness of the chain that meant they’d never be able to cut through it before Mark interrupted things.

He pushed Peter toward the edge of the bed so he could kneel on the bed by the wall. If he pressed the blade against the chain, trapping it where it met the wall, he could cut through it without pulling at the kid’s ribs.

Sparks flew when he started the motor, and the kid flinched when some landed on his skin. Tony moved to shield more of him and started it up again. His twisted wrist grew more sore by the minute under the strain of the machine, but it was making good progress on the strong metal.

When it finally cut all the way through, nearly ten minutes later, the chain fell to the blankets below with a gentle thump. Tony awkwardly backed off the bed, dropping the machine on the floor and rubbing at his hurt wrist.

Step one was done. Now he just had to wait until Mark got the medical supplies he’d gathered together. Until then, he could work with what he had.

Moving back to the head of the bed, Tony grabbed the thermometer, slipping it in the kid’s mouth and watching the numbers climb…to 103.6.

Could be worse. Not by much though.

He wet one of the rags he’d grabbed and laid it over the kid’s forehead, unsure if it was even going to help. He shook the kid’s shoulder a little, intending to try and get him to wake up and drink something, but he was nearly unresponsive, merely shaking his head with a little moan. They’d have to wait for the IV then.

“I think we finally won a battle, kid,” Tony said, patting the kid’s shoulder as he settled back down. “When you wake up, just don’t hate me for how I did it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s that? Do I spy a smidgen of hope for our characters? The beginning of the end, perhaps? I believe it is! How did that get into this whumpfest? ;)
> 
> Next chapter will be a rare villain POV filling the “Scars” prompt. And will probably be another beast chapter (read: over 6k and psychologically complicated), so it will be a bit before I can get it up. 
> 
> Thanks in advance for any and all comments, critiques, predictions, or prompts for a recovery fic sequel to this story, here or on [Tumblr](https://theassay.tumblr.com/).


	27. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cell door squeaked loudly as it opened, and Mark caught the tail-end of Peter turning his head to face the door. He stopped, but the boy didn’t move again. His eyes were still closed, his only visible movement the slight rise and fall of his chest and the faint fogging of the oxygen mask still strapped to his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long wait for a long chapter. Enjoy the first of two villain POV chapters in this fic!

Mark made it three turns down the corridor before his spinning head forced him to stop. He leaned against the wall, his controlled slide down it depositing him gently on the ground. His left arm, where Stark had managed to stab him with that needle, was partly numb, branching out into a tingle that reached his fingertips and a rapid pulsing in his chest and head.

Resisting the urge to rub at the stinging wound since massaging amplified the effect of some drugs, he instead waited stoically for his body to catch up to his brain.

He was used to tuning out discomfort, and he’d have solitude to compose himself up here. Access to the Crucible floor was extremely limited, and most of the remaining employees in the facility were currently emptying various floors in preparation for the big move and the next Master who would take up residence here. Over half the usual personnel had already left for the new building. The Guild of Masters’ policy on rotating and abandoning facilities saved them a lot of law-enforcement pursuit, but it was exhausting.

He leaned his head back on the wall behind him, closed his eyes against the harsh hallway lights, and thought.

Stark.

That bastard had actually gotten the drop on him. He hadn’t thought he had it in him, but he was a wild card when it came to that boy.

That boy.

He hadn’t been at all what Mark had expected when he’d botched the poisoning plan at the gala. He’d hoped Stark would have taught him a thing or two about metallurgy, maybe even introduced him to his own private tech designs since he obviously trusted the boy.

A few sparse high school records were all Mark had been able to track down. Generally good grades, but no hints at the kid’s specialties or preferred subjects. Just his luck the boy would prefer something as useless as chemistry.

Mark hadn’t paid the subject enough mind to tell exactly what the kid was doing, but based on the fact he’d gotten nowhere after three weeks, even that wasn’t really a strong suit of his. If he even had one. Three weeks was below average for the run-of-the-mill Crucible victim, but for someone who had a patent with Tony Stark? Pathetic.

If anything, his real strong suit was the Spider-Man suit. That was all he needed to be a threat.

Mark had called the boy dross just moments ago, but the truth was nearly the opposite. He wasn’t some rubbish byproduct, fit only to be thrown away or burned. But he’d forged himself into something so unmutable and dangerous that he was just as useless to mark.

The boy was vibranium.

Mark had encountered vibranium years ago, managed to get a hold of a scrap from an associate who knew his proclivity for forging. Despite weeks of working with the metal, he’d made zero progress. It was truly impossible to reforge the metal once it had cooled into its first form. The vibranium scrap he’s been given ended up exactly the same as it had started: a simple ring of metal, eight inches in diameter. Useless for anything Mark could think of.

Peter’s shape was more irritating than the vibranium ring had been, forgoing mere uselessness in favor of actively threatening people like Mark. He could barely blunt the boy’s sharp edges, never mind reforge his core.

There wasn’t a Crucible hot enough to corrupt mettle that strong. He’d hold his integrity without a flaw or a fissure. It was his nature, and it was infuriating.

He still shouldn’t have tried to kill him outright though.

That had been a mistake, a rule of the Masters he’d nearly broken. Once victims were in the Crucible, the Master couldn’t kill them directly.

But Stark had been so aggravating and the boy so close to death anyway, he’d lost control for a moment. It had been a miscalculation. He’d thought Stark mostly harmless, but that wasn’t quite right. Stark was an unknown alloy that Mark had assayed very poorly. Something he couldn’t allow to happen again, both for his personal pride and his reputation among the Masters.

Such miscalculations weren’t his style. Most Masters left off the Crucible once they’d found the right victims, but Mark had been at it longer than most. Reforging people was more than a talent; it was a calling.

So how could he have been so wrong about Stark? He thunked his head back against the wall, idly wishing such a simple act could jump start his memory. He traced his thoughts back to his early interactions with Peter, tried to deduce when he’d decided Stark was so damn mutable.

The boy had been adamant from the get-go that Stark was a good guy now, whatever that meant. He’d said he’d changed after Afghanistan.

And Stark had resisted every one of Mark’s efforts to strike up an alliance—even an underground one—based purely on some nonsense that he had to match morals with his colleagues.

How laughably naive. And irrational. And therefore hard to predict.

He’d assumed Iron Man and Spider-Man were only able to work together because they bore incredibly similar morals. More similar than any of the other Avengers, if their very public split was to be believed. Even Captain America didn’t live up to Stark’s massive set of morals and had been cut off.

So if Spider-Man was allowed on as a new team member, it could only be because they had the same morals, right? All the evidence pointed to that. Stark hadn’t had a large public incident in months, no confirmed kills, very little violence. What other explanation was there besides a vow to match Spider-Man’s unshakable morals?

Something didn’t add up. Stark had been willing to kill Mark just now, given it his best effort, so he hadn’t been changed by the boy nearly as much as Mark had anticipated.

Stark wasn’t vibranium.

After over a dozen Crucibles, Mark had a feel for these things. He wasn’t vibranium, but he wasn’t pathetically mutable aluminum either.

Which was both a good thing and a bad thing.

Good because it meant he was more the Merchant of Death than he liked to let on, something Mark planned to make good use of during the eventual, inevitable alliance.

Bad because it might make Stark harder to mold in other ways that Mark needed to.

He just had to find the right fissure to exploit. A metal with fissures was easier to break, and even if the boy had somehow managed to avoid acquiring any in his harsh, short life so far, Stark was full of such frailties. Alcoholism, narcissism, PTSD if you could believe the tabloids.

But there had to be something else. Something so new Stark didn’t know about it or so old and ingrained he couldn’t do anything about it. Mark could figure it out, given enough time.

Provided that boy stopped getting in the way.

He’d served a good purpose in drawing Stark here, but now he was a distraction. A constant and unyielding distraction because apparently the boy didn’t know how to half-ass a single thing in his life.

At least the deal he’d made with Stark would solve that problem soon and for a while. Maybe forever if the boy was sick enough.

If Mark hadn’t been pressed for time, he might have tried to barter Stark down a few items—he’d demanded basically an entire hospital suite. But once those painkillers had started to hit him, Mark had been desperate to finish things up and get out of the room. The last thing he needed was to collapse in a victim’s room, completely at their mercy.

So now he had a ridiculous request to make of the Guild’s on-call doctors. It was a lot to ask, but he couldn’t go back on the terms now. He’d already half-broken one rule by trying to kill the boy. If he broke another one by reneging on the terms of a deal made in the Crucible, nothing good would happen.

Best case, he’d be forbidden from publishing their inventions under his own name—not much of a tragedy since some weak acid and a palm-sized robot that moved like a spider weren’t ground-breaking.

Worst case, he wouldn’t be allowed to keep working with Stark. It was unusual for Crucible victims to be transferred between Masters, but for a catch like Tony Stark, Mark wouldn’t be surprised to see a bidding war.

Mark pulled himself to his feet, his head only spinning for a few seconds as he adjusted to standing. He’d told Stark he’d have the supplies in four hours, and that deadline was waiting for no one. He moved down the hallways toward his office, located on the top floor of the facility.

Getting Stark away from the boy would solve one major problem, but this solution left another screaming problem in its wake. A living, breathing Spider-Man fresh out of the Crucible, driven by righteous anger was definitely a problem that was coming back to arrest him.

Or at least to try and arrest him, and inevitably cause chaos and delays in his attempt. Even knowing Mark’s face and name, he’d still be hard-pressed to track him down. Faces weren’t hard to come by in the Guild, not if you were on good terms with the Face Master. And the name Mark Carpaccio was his given name, but he had few ties to it any more. He used it in his publications and in the Guild, but for little else. He’d left that all behind him.

Even if Spider-Man did track Mark down, the Guild would take care of him. Their usual tactics of blackmailing and threatening Crucible victims who left but still wouldn’t deal wouldn’t work on Spider-Man, but they were used to dealing with other threats to the Guild at large. And there were far fewer rules when dealing with them.

Mark would be safe from Spider-Man one way or another, but any protection from the Guild would cost Mark resources and reputation. Spider-Man’s tenacity made that an inevitability if he survived.

Spider-Man would come after Mark until Mark was in jail or Spider-Man was dead. And Iron Man would likely trail after him, lending his expertise and trying to protect him like he had in the lab.

There was a slight possibility that Stark would be able to stop the boy, reign in or redirect his righteous fervor to another pursuit, but those chances were slim. The boy idolized Stark, but likely not enough to sacrifice his ideals of justice.

Honestly, Mark wasn’t sure anymore. The boy was vibranium in his hands, but maybe Stark could do more. Not being sure was not how Mark liked to operate. He shouldn’t have brought the boy in at all, but he’d been so tempting: obviously close to Stark, name on a patent as a teenager, and Spider-Man to top if off.

But all of that was useless or distracting. He hadn’t even been able to utilize the spider part of the kid that made him truly unique, and not for lack of trying.

He entered his office and glared at the burner phone on his desk. Three days of trying to call the Creature Masters to see if they still wanted to study him had gotten him no response. They’d likely traveled to some remote location to study a species, but he couldn’t shake the worry that he was being iced out or missing a big play going on that called for radio silence. He hated being out of the loop.

Mark sank into a high-backed office chair in front of a black Ikea table, picking the phone up and flipping it over in his hand. If they’d answered, he could have taken full advantage of Stark’s shocking offer. The man was truly desperate to have invoked the biologists as an option. It would have been the perfect set-up if pawning the boy off to the biologists had been the mercy play in Stark’s eyes. Two birds with one stone. If only they’d answered their damn burners.

Mark had only employed one biologist in his Crucibles. He’d requested all sorts of lab animals for testing, and they had been far more trouble than they were worth. Too many living bodies to care for were a time-consuming distraction. Isolation allowed for focus and distilled ideas.

He should have known the same rule would apply to two victims put together in the Crucible. He should have stuck with one, not bothered making an exception for Tony Stark.

With the boy gone, Mark could finally figure out what had changed about Stark since Afghanistan, since something clearly had.

There was a fissure in the man’s iron somewhere, and if Mark could just find it, he could plant a wedge there and swing away.

But until then, Mark had a deal to keep and some favors to call in. He unlocked the phone, selecting the Medical Masters’ on-call center contact, listening idly to the ringing.

Once Stark saw that he intended to keep his promises—a Master always kept his word—then maybe he’d be willing to talk. That would be the time to turn up the heat and find out what Stark was really made of.

#

Three hours after the deal had been made, Mark found himself in front of the cell door, being trailed by a doctor in scrub and a cart, burdened with medical supplies and an atrociously squeaky wheel. He’d lucked out with chopper timing at the main facility. Someone had been available within the hour. This doctor was actually the same one who had removed Stark’s forearm implants and incinerated them, not that Stark would remember that to appreciate the irony. She was due to turn around the fly right back out after setting everything up.

The cell door opened to the same quiet tableau as last time. The boy lay on the bed, not having moved an inch, and Stark was sitting on the stool again.

An angle grinder from the lab lay haphazardly on the floor next to the bed, far enough away from Stark and his propensity for improvised weapons that Mark disregarded it. Both of Stark’s hands were clasping one of Peter’s, and the lack of syringes in them calmed Mark’s singular anxious nerve. The shorn end of the rib shackle chain lay on the bed next to the boy like a dead snake.

Stark’s eye widened comically when Mark stepped to the side to allow the doctor to step through with her cart. If he was surprised Mark had kept his word, he still had a lot to learn about the Crucible. The boy had picked up on Mark’s commitment to following through, but Stark still seemed to doubt it. He’d been here less than a third of the time the boy had though.

“Everything as requested,” Mark said with a flourish of his arm over the cart as it squeaked into place next to him. “Never let it be said I go back on my word.”

“That’s the doctor?” Stark’s voice sounded like he’d been crying, but his eyes were hard as steel. And suspicious.

“It is,” Mark confirmed. “So if you’ll step aside to let her work…” He gestured to the side of the room, and Stark reluctantly set the boy’s hand back on the bed and ceded his spot near the head of the bed, where the doctor immediately set up an IV pole.

The two men stood, several feet apart, as the doctor inserted IV lines, hung bags of liquid from the poles, and set up an oxygen tank near the bed, fiddling with the tubes and dials on the complicated machine.

Stark shifted his weight from foot to foot, observing things anxiously, while Mark stood like a statue, his hands in his pockets.

“You didn’t specify the nebulizer treatment addition,” Mark said into the heavy silence as the doctor lifted Peter’s head to slip the oxygen mask on, “but the doctor thought it would be appropriate. Consider it a token of good faith. Something to show we can be on the same side.”

Something to make Stark feel like he owed Mark. The doctor had brought it along as part of a pre-made respiratory aid kid, and Mark had decided to use it. If it got Stark even an inch closer to an alliance, it would be well worth it.

Stark’s eyes narrowed at Mark in suspicious, and he turned to the doctor before speaking.

“It’ll really help? Not some sort of trick?”

“Not at all,” the doctor said easily. “It’s a common enough treatment for severe pneumonia.”

“And that’s what he’s got then?”

“That’s what the Forge Master said, and his symptoms do point to that. I can’t diagnose without an actual test though. But either way, the nebulizer and oxygen will help.”

Stark nodded, but didn’t offer his thanks. Mark accepted them anyway.

The doctor pulled out a few covered trays of food and a dozen water bottles, setting them up in arm’s reach of the bed. Stark chose then to break the silence.

“I need a pen and paper to leave the kid a note.”

“Changing the deal, are we?” Mark was already planning on giving in to such a harmless request, but Stark ought to view it as a mercy first, not as an entitlement.

“I’ll use soup noodles on the floor if I have to,” Stark gestured to the food trays, “but a pen and paper will be faster. If he wakes up and I’m not here, he needs to know why.”

Fair enough.

“You can write a note in your new room, and I’ll deliver it.” Mark nodded his head toward the bed, where the doctor was putting the remnants of Peter’s care back on the cart. “Time to say goodbye.”

Stark was brief at least, dropping his parting words quietly with a hand on the boy’s hair. “Sorry, kid. You’ll be pissed, but it’s all we’ve got. Hang in there.”

The doctor stepped up to Mark’s side, speaking quietly. “If that’s all you need, I’m flying back out. When should I be back to pick up supplies?”

“The facility should be empty in 32 hours,” Mark murmured. “The boy will be here a little longer, but you’re clear to come back 40 hours from now for anything that’s left.”

She nodded sharply. “Understood. Any items that are taken will come out of your budget.” She walked from the room without another word, leaving the cart behind her.

Stark turned from the bed at her departure, and Mark gestured to the door in mock chivalry. “After you. I’ll direct you as we go. And hands out of your pockets, if you don’t mind. I don’t know how many syringes you’ve got stashed away.”

Stark smirked but kept his hands clear of his clothing as he marched out the door.

Finally. Away from the distraction.

He directed Stark down a series of hallways and up a few sets of stairs, ducking into a supply closet along the way to grab a pen and notebook.

The room they arrived at was a cell identical to the one they’d just left, minus the personal touches. Same bed, this time with a bare mattress. Same empty bookshelf. Same loop of chain on the wall between the two. Same wall that rolled up into another of the facility’s three Crucibles.

Mark reached around and tossed the notebook and pen on the bare mattress in front of Stark.

“You get one page, and I’ll put it on the boy’s bed when you’re done where he’ll find it. Don’t say a word to the rescuers. I’ll be reading the letter when you’re done.”

Stark immediately grabbed the notebook and pen, sat on the bed, and started writing. Which meant it was time to start searching for that fissure. Time to assay Iron Man once again, this time without a stubborn spider tainting the results.

“I was wrong about you,” Mark said, studying Stark’s response carefully. “You haven’t abandoned your killer’s nature completely. But something is still different. You’re no Oppenheimer. Not anymore.”

“I’ve tried not to be,” Stark said, obviously more focused on the letter than anything else. Which was fine. It meant he was subconsciously thinking of Mark as much less of a threat without the boy present, and it meant his answers would be distracted. Spontaneous answers often revealed more than calculated ones.

“Why? Don’t you miss it?”

If he did, it would be that much easier to encourage him to return.

“Nope.”

Of course, there was still the possibility that Stark was deceiving those around him, deceiving himself even. How could one have that much influence and not miss it even a little?

“But you wielded such power. The Guild could get you there again, amplify even your previous impressive efforts.”

“The Guild? What are you, a time-traveling Medieval blacksmith? That does explain your ridiculous name.”

Ah, yes. The boy had called it angsty. Mark understood that reaction, but he didn’t care any more. The name meant he was a part of something, was someone again, and that was comforting.

“The Guild will let you see your knowledge put to maximum use,” Mark said, ignoring the jab.

“Put to evil use.” He said it with such confidence and finality, like that claim had won him an argument. He didn’t realize it had entered him into a debate, defending something indefensible.

“People twist the best of things, Stark, through no fault of our own. If a doctor invents a painkiller that a druggie steals and overdoses on, do we charge the doctor for murder? Is he an evil man?”

Stark rolled his eyes as he continued writing, probably bothered by the theoretical. So small-minded.

“You can’t selfishly hoard your knowledge,” Mark continued, “just because you can’t handle the reality that you can’t control everyone who will come across that knowledge. Knowledge is something that belongs to the world, not to the mind who happens upon it first.” It was the basis of the entire Crucible system, but its truth reached so much further than that.

“Some things are too dangerous to use until you earn the right by developing the knowledge yourself.” Stark paused in his writing. “It’s why college classes drag you through every damn proof you’ll ever rely on. You’ve got to understand the foundation you’re building on. If you don’t understand it, you’ll misuse it.”

It was such a Stark thing to say, Mark almost rolled his eyes. Of course the genius inventor would claim his inventions in whatever way he could.

“So knowledge is a prerequisite for power? That’s easy for a genius to say.”

Stark looked up from the notebook, pointing to Mark with a pen.

“You want to know when warfare became really ugly? It’s when Forge Masters and blacksmiths were taken out of the picture. When we handed men tools that they barely needed training to use. Physical training, not mental training, although they’re analogous here. Swordsmen knew the cost of strength. They knew the knowledge and wisdom behind each warrior, so they knew the weights of life and death. Your average gunmen couldn’t care less. They destroy more because they don’t understand. At least, not at first.”

What an archaically nostalgic perspective for a weapons manufacturer. Only his superhero persona could possible keep him thinking that warriors were noble. Mark may call himself the Forge Master, but he suffered no illusion that things were at all today what they were centuries ago. There was no way to go back, even if one wanted to. Hoarding scientific discoveries and knowledge from plebeians certainly wasn’t the way to go.

“One might say that guns leveled the playing field in warfare, made it more equitable.”

“They’ll level the entire world if we’re not careful,” Stark said. “Swipe it down to nothing. No one wins then. If people don’t know the weight of what they’re swinging, they’ll overbalance, and take a hell of a lot down with them.”

That perspective was a little more modern, the idea of warfare destroying the world, but it wasn’t the whole picture.

“So what happened to the Merchant of Death? Did he himself overbalance or did he get tired of so many other people around him falling over?”

“Both.”

He’d meant the question rhetorically, with a bit of cutting humor, but Stark had answered without a hint of levity. But it was foolish to say the Merchant of Death had overbalanced, that he couldn’t wield what he had created. It was so clearly and obviously wrong that saying it with such a self-deprecating tone was absurd and showed Stark wasn’t taking this conversation seriously.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mark said, allowing a hint of annoyance into his voice, “and don’t sell yourself short.”

“I didn’t think the Forge Master was one for pep talks,” Stark said, dropping the pen to the bed and tearing the page he’d written on out of the notebook.

“This isn’t a pep talk,” Mark said. “It’s an awakening, an awakening to the realization that you can go back. You traded Oppenheimer for Iron Man, not realizing that you can be both: the selfless superhero and the genius warmonger. You didn’t have to sacrifice the power and influence of your inventions in the world, and you can undo that sacrifice.”

Stark folded the paper in half carefully, then held it out. Mark stared at it, loathe to take the letter until the conversation was done. He had to keep Stark invested. 

“This conversation isn’t finished,” Mark said levelly when Stark didn’t move.

He held the paper out for a few more seconds before throwing an annoyed hand up in the air and turning back in frustration. “You want to talk? Fine. Yeah, I was a Oppenheimer, near enough. I know that. The Ten Rings taught me that. And every trigger pulled by people who shouldn’t have had my guns because I wasn’t paying enough attention to my own damn company? Those were on me. Are still on me. And I can’t live with any more of it than I already have. The things I created were being used to hurt people. To destroy lives.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Stark misunderstood the natural cost of any sort of progress.

“Collateral damage is always the cost of innovat—”

“No.” There was venom in Stark’s voice now. “No, that cost is too high.”

That sounded like something Mark had heard before, in quiet but fervent whispers between the inventor and his distraction.

“Ah, that must be the influence of this Yinsen you told the boy about.” He’d spoken of him fondly. Sorrowfully. Mark didn’t know exactly what had happened in that cave, what sacrifice had been made and for what, or how it had reforged Stark, but he had a hunch that this Yinsen character might be the star that guided him to the weakness in Stark’s mettle.

“The death of one man has given you the guilt of the world.”

“No. He only opened my eyes to it. It was there all along.” Stark kept eye contact despite the vulnerable topic, which Mark couldn’t help but respect. He actually felt a little threatened, like Stark was defending his friend’s mere memory.

He was wrong about the guilt, of course, but he could work with that. Time to try some reshaping. These sorts of philosophical differences were Mark’s favorite to exploit. He loved bringing people over to his side, loved if all he managed was confusing people enough that they looked at their own side with a raised eyebrow.

“But it wasn’t there all along. You imagine yourself a false Atlas, eternally burdened, but that guilt is only on your shoulders because people like Yinsen, people who had no right to, asked you to carry it. Practically threw it at you, if I had to guess. And you didn’t know what to do with it, so you accepted it. But they were wrong to blame you, to give you that guilt. It wasn’t theirs to give nor yours to take.”

“It had to go to someone.”

He really was desperate to believe that guilt was a legitimate motivator. That just anyone could give it to you.

“Guilt is merely a desperate creation of powerless minds, so it doesn’t have to go to anyone. When people feel powerless, sometimes pointing the finger of blame is all they feel they _can _do. When they are surrounded by a thousand men with guns, it feels easier to blame the man who invented the triggers. It’s not unlike religion actually. People are surrounded by a thousand men and look instead to God for answers. But as we’ve already established, Stark, you’re not God. They can’t appeal to you on behalf of the actions of the world.”

The paper in Stark’s grasp was crumpling from the strength of his grip as he responded. “The fact still stands that if I’d never invented those weapons and let them be dealt under the table, Yinsen would still have a family.”

“No, they just would have died at someone else’s triggers.” Stark flinched at the harshness, which Mark found oddly childish. He couldn’t actually believe that he was the only man capable of introducing danger into the world.

“That’s another flaw of the powerless,” Mark said. “They don’t realize that the trigger inventors are stacked just as deep as the trigger-pullers are spread wide. You may step back from distributing and creating weapons, and Spider-Man may target the Vulture instead of his minions. Both disrupt supply chains and cause confusion among the ranks for a while, but it never lasts. There will always be a Hammer behind every Stark, a Shocker behind every Vulture. You abdicating the war inventor’s role doesn’t mean no one else will step into it. Others will fill the lucrative void you left. You absence has created no net gain for the world, but great personal loss for yourself, so if someone’s going to weaponize the world, why not you? Why shouldn’t your genius be the one to profit?”

Mark expected a long pause while Stark considered his words, but there was barely a second before he responded, with the same irritating confidence and finality as before.

“I prefer a clear conscience.”

As if that was clear enough to make choices by. He could acquire a clear conscience by adjusting his standards.

“Then shrug off their accusations. You don’t need to answer to them. Be proud of your influence.”

“Proud that terrorists bought my weapons from my own company under my own nose and used them to wage war against innocents?”

“First of all, there’s no such thing as an innocent,” Mark said, a little surprised that Iron Man would need the same basic clarification Spider-Man had needed. “Second, you can be proud that you equipped people to accomplish their goals. You can’t be responsible for the direction of their actions, for good or for evil.”

“You’re just…” Stark started, then shook his head and looked away. “I don’t understand you. You can’t just take the absolutely value of any action you had a hand in. You can’t claim magnitude while ignoring morality. That’s not how it works.”

“It’s a common function in math. I don’t see why it wouldn’t apply here.”

“Because this is people, not numbers.” He was getting more visibly irritated now, which was good. He shifted his weight side to side, looking desperate to start pacing if it wouldn’t force him to turn his back to Mark.

“So you’re proud of anything people have done with your inventions, good or bad?” Stark asked. “Someone could use them to make a piece of art or a massive scar, and they’d both be the same to you?”

A simple enough question, answered with a shrug. “They’re both the same to me if my inventions are being used by a person whose alignment I cannot control.”

“But you can!” Stark nearly yelled. “That’s why you only work with people who are kind of like you! That’s how you control the alignment of the people who use your stuff.”

“Such a lonely philosophy from the man whose morals were too lofty for even the Avengers to match. You’re alone now because you couldn’t overlook minute differences in direction.”

Stark looked confused, which could mean he was surprised Mark had figured it out or that he thought Mark was off-base, hard to say which right now.

“Alone except for Spider-Man,” Mark said, still pushing while Stark still looked baffled. “He hasn’t left yet. But then again, he’s too lofty for you, so I don’t see that relationship lasting much longer, pneumonia or not.”

The longest pause yet in the conversation before a much quieter response.

“He’d be better off if he left, but he won’t.”

He was getting closer, through the tough outer shell.

“His mistake then,” Mark said. “Whatever happens to him is out of your hands.”

“But it’s on my shoulders.”

Which was such an infuriatingly stupid thing to say, Mark couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. He said it so solemnly, like such weight on his back might crush him instead of move him, like something out of your hands could ever be on your shoulders, like being responsible for other people’s actions could ever reflect poorly on you.

If he truly believed that, how could he function? Wouldn’t eh anxiety of trying to police your allies’ actions breed nothing but inevitable failure and guilt? How could he function with such a burden?

Maybe he couldn’t.

And there was the fissure.

They’d been skirting around it the entire conversation. Guilt was what had driven his retreat from Oppenheimer _then_ and what had driven him into the arms of the Accords, away from the other Avengers, and out of the public eye _now_. He didn’t think them below his morals, likely the other way around.

Guilt was probably what had driven him close to the boy, too. The plane crash with the Vulture. Was Tony trying to atone for that?

Stark’s insistence that he only worked with people with the same morals was nothing but pontificating. He and Spider-Man weren’t the same. They’d attracted each other because they were opposites. The boy saw Stark as an influential, heroic adult. Stark saw the boy as an innocent that could give him penance through mentoring.

His current partnership with Spider-Man wasn’t coming from a place of righteous strength and moral fortitude to match the boy’s; it was coming from a place of guilt and shame. It was a Hail Mary to whatever God Stark believed in as he tried to compensate for the crushing guilt he felt for a million lives _on his shoulders_.

That was a true fissure, a deep and an ancient one so prevalent in Iron Man’s mettle, it was impossible for him to completely defend against.

Mark could work with that.

Mark could _weaponize_ that.

He would make that guilt so heavy that Stark would be forced to abandon it completely or succumb to it, shrug it from his shoulders or let it crush him.

Either option was fine with Mark.

“You ready to take this yet?”

The letter waving in his face interrupted what had been an awkwardly long eureka moment Stark was yet unaware of. Mark took the letter and tucked it in his pocket.

“You can’t change the sting of the scorpion. It’s in its nature,” Mark said, forgoing any attempt at a smooth transition. He’d found the fissure, now it was time to turn up the heat. Drive the first wedge. “You nature is death and influence and power. You had nearly become death, and then you gave it all up.”

“Should tell you that it’s not all it’s cracked to be.”

“Or that _you_ aren’t all you’re cracked up to be.”

“That’s a given.”

The self-deprecation from earlier had made a comeback and was suddenly making much more sense. It wasn’t Iron Man mocking the conversation with absurdity. It was honesty.

It was still wrong and stupid, but knowing that it wasn’t an idle weapon like the infamous Stark snark, was instead a vulnerable instance of fragility to target, made all the difference.

“Your nature hasn’t changed, no matter what you think. Iron Man has merely moved you to a smaller scale. You still bring death as an Avenger to all those around you. Maybe if you’d realized that earlier, Spider-Man wouldn’t have been touched by it.”

It was a low blow, the first instance of guilt Mark could think to seize on and apply, but it had the desired effect. Stark stepped threateningly close, his voice a low hiss.

“You keep away from him. We had a deal.”

But his hands weren’t digging in pockets for a weapon. He was harmless.

“I will do nothing but deliver the letter,” Mark said. “You have my word. I’m talking about far more than his time in my forge. I’m talking about being poisoned at your party.”

Mark stepped uncomfortably close, and Stark took an instinctive step backward.

“I’m talking about the Vulture and the plane crash.”

Another step.

“Why did you even involve the boy, Stark? Some selfish need for penance for the worlds you’ve destroyed?”

Another step.

“A bleeding heart like him should have nothing to do with you. Death touches everything you do. Everything we do.”

Stark collided with the edge of the bed and sat down hard, staring to the side as he listened, Mark’s shadow falling over him completely.

Stark’s next words were so quiet that Mark almost missed them, a tortured whisper.

“We are become death.”

Perfect.

But Stark was already sitting up straighter, trying to shake off what he’d just said. That was fine. It would take time for the fissure to split and the man to be reforged. But he’d said the words. That was a better start than Mark could have hoped for.

“We are become life, too,” Mark said, “if it makes you feel any better. We bring ideas to life, create anew, and our creations both extend life and bring death, depending how they’re used. It’s a beautiful cycle to be standing at the center of. But we can only control the act of creation, not what it produces. Everything beyond the moment of creation is out of our control.”

“Yep. God complex. I pegged it from the start. And coming from a guy who has met two actual gods, let me just say that you don’t pull it off very well.”

There was the Stark snark, being pulled out like a shield to protect a weak spot that had been struck. Classic wounded Stark. Was he was even conscious he was doing it?

“Not a god complex,” Mark said. “I don’t claim to be omni-anything. And I don’t claim to be benevolent, which claim seems to be the root of your problems. I’m just as happy to solve world hunger as to start the next world war. As long as my name’s somewhere on it.”

Stark stood up, forcing Mark back a few paces.

“I refuse to be death.”

“Then that constant battle against your nature will be your fatal flaw. And will breed constant regret at your failure to keep it from tainting those around you. Especially the boy, should you continue to work together.”

“If I haven’t scared the kid off yet, I doubt I will.”

That was part snarky shield, but part honest doubt. He honestly wasn’t sure if he’d leave. Mark could add flame to that forge.

“Who can say what the Crucible does to a man,” Mark said. “He puts on a show, but I know his fear. I know that he’s the sort to fight against it, to deny it, rather than embrace it and build off it like I did. He’ll push past the beginnings of his fear to pursue evil without realizing that parts of that very fear will cripple him in his pursuit.”

“No, he’ll move past it because he’s nothing like you. Don’t talk like you know him.”

“I _do_ know him because I _was_ him.”

Mark pulled the right side of his shirt collar down far enough to reveal the scars there. The scars from a set of clavicle shackles. The scars from the surgeries needed to repair the damage they’d done. The scars from his own time in the Crucible.

He hadn’t shown them to anyone in a long while, and never to a victim in the Crucible. But a little sympathy from Stark would go a long way. And pointing out something Mark had in common with the boy would go even further.

Any connections he could foster would further confuse Stark. The same strategy had worked a charm on the boy when he compared Stark to the Vulture. He still smiled when he pictured the boy’s baffled face as he’d tried to defend one without defending the other.

Stark’s face now, looked both confused and mildly horrified. His eyes had widened almost imperceptibly, but he remained silent, waiting for Mark to explain.

The scars weren’t a pretty sight. They were many, all centered around the jutting bone, still uneven and gnarled looking even years later. 

“The Crucible isn’t deadly to all of us who are challenged by it,” Mark said, his voice low and serious. “If he lives, he’ll never forget it, just as I never have. It will be a constant reminder of his powerlessness and his subsequent choices here, something that will drive him forward if he respects it or cripple him if he fears it. Something that will drive him away from you once he realizes his connection to you is what brought him here.”

“What are…they did to you…and then…you did it…”

“All the Masters come from the Crucibles,” Mark said, interrupting Stark’s babbling. “Peter might have made a good one were he not so stubborn. A Spider Master could have served us well. As Iron Master will have to do though. Or an Iron Consultant, depending on what you commit to.”

“How many Masters are there? How many Crucibles?”

Classified. At least until he was a full member of the Guild.

“They’ve drawn the best out of a great many.”

“That’s what you meant when you said you’d done this before?” Stark said, apparently having found his voice again. “Is this whole damn set-up a messed-up rite of passage for your unwilling cult initiates?”

“Answers in due time,” Mark said. “For now…” He drew a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket.

“Really? I couldn’t escape with an entire lab and both my hands. Exactly what do you think I’ll do here?”

“There are no cameras in here to keep an eye on you, and freedom is a lab privilege anyway. Of course, if you’d prefer a different type of restraint, I’ve recently branched out in that field. I could call the doctor back.”

Stark scowled, his eyes flitting obviously to Mark’s now-covered scar, then extended his wrists.

It was an easy matter to cuff Stark’s hands in front of him, then attach the cuffs to the chain on the wall next to the bed. It was long enough to allow movement around the half of the cell away from the door. He couldn’t give Stark the option to take advantage of the lack of cameras, wait by the door, and ambush the next person to enter.

He locked the door behind him without another word to Stark, pulling out the letter to read as he walked back to the boy’s cell. It was typical farewell fare. Harmless. Even the random periodic element at the bottom that was probably part of the code they’d mentioned. Even if it was important, it wasn’t like the boy was going to wake up to read it before Stark was long gone.

The cell door squeaked loudly as it opened, and Mark caught the tail-end of Peter turning his head to face the door. He stopped, but the boy didn’t move again. His eyes were still closed, his only visible movement the slight rise and fall of his chest and the faint fogging of the oxygen mask still strapped to his face.

He approached the bed, dropping the folded letter on the blankets near the boy’s hand.

Delivered, as promised.

He would have turned to go, but the chain leading out from under the blankets lay glinting, a sharp testament of the chain that had once been wrapped around Mark’s collarbone. He really did have something in common with the boy, maybe even beyond the scars they would likely now share.

They shared a dedication to their calling, no matter the pain.

The aftermath of Mark’s clavicle injury—a situation much less an accident than the boy’s had been—had been rough. He could have left off forging altogether, was recommended to by several doctors, but he pushed through the pain and trained his body again. He’d always been right-handed, but his painful recovery had forced him into ambidexterity. He even preferred the left now when forging.

Despite physical limitations, he couldn’t just let someone else in the organization take over study on caminium; that just felt wrong. Caminium had helped him survive the Crucible; he couldn’t abandon it to any old Master.

Especially not the Master who’d taken him. He’d given the man a scar or two of his own before escaping, but it was all water under the bridge now. Had to be since Mark was one of the Masters and occasionally had to work alongside the man.

Spider-Man would be the same. It would be easier—physically and mentally—for someone else to take over the boy’s cause. He could leave targeting the Guild to the rest of the Avengers, if any of them besides Iron Man would even step up.

But he wouldn’t be able to let them. He’d commit to it like Mark had committed to caminium, push his body as far as it would go to keep doing what he felt he needed to do.

Not so different after all.

He left, closing the door quietly behind him, and walked to his office, cataloging everything that still had to be done to meet the 36-hour deadline they’d started with.

His underlings had already started dismantling and packing up what he’d brought to the facility, starting with his extensive forging and surveillance equipment. The next Master would fill the empty spaces with their own preferences.

He ground his teeth in frustration. This building would likely need to be razed or sold once the Over Master found out he was sending its coordinate to the Avengers so they could come save Spider-Man. He pulled the door to his office open so hard it bounced off the wall. He shouldn’t have made the deal he had, should have waited until he was in a better head space, should have waited until he wasn’t racing against the flow of a few damn drops of super-powered painkillers in his veins.

These facilities usually lasted 5-10 years, so this one was only a little head of schedule, but it would cost him something with the Demolition Masters if they couldn’t sell.

The bookshelves lining his office reminded him of all the work he still had to do. Pack up books, various tinkering experiments—including the spider bot he’d taken from Stark—plus a few weapons scattered around. Mark wasn’t much of a marksman, but he was passable. And too suspicious to leave his office unequipped.

The sharp, tinny sound of a forging hammer striking an anvil burst from the burner phone still on his desk. The glanced at the screen, heart jumping a little when he saw the contact for the Biology Masters lighting up the screen. It was about damn time.

“Hello?”

“Oh good, you finally answered,” Dean’s chipper voice responded.

He was one to talk. He sounded legitimately glad Mark had answered, but three days of ghosting weren’t put to bed that easily.

“I’ve been taking care of some things,” was all that Mark volunteered.

“Us too. We’ve called six times, man. We’re walking onto another plane in five minutes.”

“Been abroad?”

His answer would tell Mark his standing with them. Dean particularly was incapable of a convincing lie. If he told him easily, the three days had been unfortunate timing and a lack of cell service. If he hid it or brushed it off, then something else was afoot among the Masters.

“Yeah, jungles of South America this time. Just the worst. Humidity. Sweating. Gross. We’re on layover in Mexico right now.”

Nothing big then. Just an honest case of bad timing.

“That’s what you get for studying biology,” Mark said, loosening up a little.

“Oh, like forging is any less hot and sweaty.”

“It’s a dry heat.”

“Har, har,” Dean said, then said something away from the phone. “We’ve got three minutes. Sylvia says she’s got a bunch of calls from you too. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a spider that might interest you.”

“Yeah? This that mutant you pitched us a few weeks ago? He failed, huh?”

“And now he’s a loose end.”

“We’re good at handling those. Send over a resource transfer form and we’ll see—”

“There are some complications,” Mark interrupted. He had to make his position clear, not leave them any chance to claim he’d been dishonest. “He’s getting medical treatment because he’s not in the best shape. And I worked out a deal with another victim for him because you weren’t answering. He’ll have a rescue coming for him in roughly twenty-fours hours. You’ll have to move quick, but there’s a window for you. I won’t be here to facilitate.”

He’d have to be careful about this. He said he’d leave the boy alone personally, and he couldn’t go back on any of the details of his deal with Stark. He had to leave the boy here, leave the doors open, and let Stark send his message to his team.

He’d just…send one more message at the same time. Then it would be a race against time to see who got the spider first.

“We can work around things for a specimen like that,” Dean said after a short, inaudible conversation with Sylvia. “Email us all the details and we’ll review them from the plane. Assuming this one’s actually got wi-fi. The department budget’s looking pretty healthy right now, but if you don’t discount for a sick specimen, even if it’s Spider-Man, you’ll get reamed by Paula herself. She’ll expect a full medical summary.”

“I’ll do my best. Expect to hear from me within the hour.”

A smile stretched across Mark’s face.

Two windfalls in one day. Uncovering Iron Man’s weakness and now setting this final wheel in motion.

Spider-Man wouldn’t be a threat for much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All uses of metal/mettle in this chapter were intentional and inspired by this line from Ivanhoe where someone recognizes the knight through a disguise: “There dropt words from you last night and this morning, that, like sparks from flint, showed the metal within.” Dunno why that’s the one line from that book I vividly remember, but I’ve always loved it. 
> 
> The next chapter is Peter’s POV. Any guesses how much time will have passed between this chapter and that one?
> 
> As always, I'd love to know your favorite line from this chapter, and any critiques, comments, compliments or recovery prompts that might come to mind. Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come yell at me on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	28. Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding the paper's edge, he picked it up, unfolded it, and held it over his head where he could read it in the room’s dim light. Light blue still clung to the inner ends of his fingernails as they shook above him, and he could see a series of shallow cuts on his fingers and palms that hadn’t been there the last time he’d been awake, but the welcome sight of Mr. Stark’s messy handwriting nearly sang the words on the paper out to him.

A rhythmic hiss and click drew Peter away from the silence, away from the darkness, away from the teasing chill and into the freezing cold.

Hiss. Click.

A puff of cool air against parted lips.

Hiss. Click.

The ever-present buzz of an overly sensitive spider sense signaling an unknown danger.

Hiss. Click.

A familiar pain on both sides of his rib cage.

Hiss. Click.

An uncomfortable pressure on his nose.

Hiss. Click.

Peter threw a clumsy hand up to his face, flopping against an oxygen mask he found pressed to it. He paused, wanting to lift it up, but sure Mr. Stark or May or whoever was in the med bay would put it straight back on as soon as they got back.

It felt like someone had filled the bottom third of his lungs with cement, so he probably still needed it. The urge to cough was still there, gripping his throat, but he pressed it down. It could wait a few more minutes.

His hand fell back to the bed, and the crinkle of struck paper under his fingertips made him blink his eyes open.

The dark cell walls around him, painfully familiar after three weeks of waking here, added a weight to his already burdened chest. Not the med bay. He’d thought that maybe…

But no, of course not. He was still here. He’d done nothing worthy of escape. Not yet. Turning his head to the side pulled against the tubes of the oxygen mask, but he did it anyway to get a good look around the room.

He was lying under the blankets, mask on his face, an IV in each arm. He’d refused one earlier in case Mark used it to drug him, so his first instinct was to pull them out, but what if they were helping like the oxygen mask was?

He left them alone and kept looking, noting the dark lights above him. Spillover from the bright lights in the lab through the open door lit the room around him, but the lab was silent. Empty. Even straining, he couldn’t hear a single step or heartbeat coming from either room.

Peter was really out of the loop. He felt like he’d both been asleep for far too long and for not long enough, a sleepy fog hanging around like he’d taken one of those accidental after-school naps and woken up at bedtime and didn’t know what to do.

If Mr. Stark were here, he’d probably say something about temperatures and tell him to go back to sleep. He’d done that last night, right? Peter couldn’t remember much more than bits and pieces of sights and sounds. It was all so jumbled. Something about taffy? And then Mark—

Peter threw himself up to one elbow, checking the room again more clearly, ignoring the jolts of pain it sent through his abdomen until he could be absolutely certain the room was indeed empty. If Mark had actually been here last night, pushing Peter to the bed to keep him from helping Mr. Stark in the lab, he certainly wasn’t now.

But he’d discovered the code, right? Had probably tortured Mr. Stark for it. And he’d had some kind of extra face cloaking tech? Peter screwed his eyes shut, trying to remember the moment Mr. Stark’s face had melted horrifically back to Mark’s. Had that really happened?

None of his memories felt right, little glimpses that felt impossible and wouldn’t fit together to form a whole story.

He sank back to the bed, gasping a little, his hand striking the paper again.

Finding its edge, he picked it up, unfolded it, and held it over his head where he could read it in the room’s dim light. Light blue still clung to the inner ends of his fingernails as they shook above him, and he could see a series of shallow cuts on his fingers and palms that hadn’t been there the last time he’d been awake, but the welcome sight of Mr. Stark’s messy handwriting nearly sang the words on the paper out to him.

_Kid,_

_You might never read this because Mark_ _’s a lying bastard, but if you wake up before help comes for you, stay put. Hug a tree. Have a snack. Relax. Help is on the way. I wasn’t part of the deal, but it’s okay. I want this. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back before you even know it. And don’t you dare pull anything close to the same stunt I did if Mark ever calls up and offers—that’s my move, not yours. I don’t know if this last bit will hurt or help after last night, but it’s all I’ve got. Enjoy the fresh air, kid._

A recognizable signature and Morse code lined the bottom of the page.

_P-O-T-A-S-S-I-U-M. P-O-T-A-S-S-I-U-M. P-O-T-A-S-S-I-U-M._

The hand holding the paper dropped to his chest, unsure if it held a lifeline or a snake. Could he trust it? It looked like Mr. Stark’s signature at the bottom, and that was definitely their code, but something in the back of Peter’s mind still insisted that the code had been compromised.

If the letter was fake, then Peter should ignore it. Specifically try and _not do_ what it said. Although the rib shackles gave him little choice in the matter of staying put. But if the chain would let him in the lab, Peter had to get back to work. A fake letter and missing Mr. Stark meant he was in trouble, and the only thing Peter could think of to help was finish his acid, use it to burn through his chain and the door lock, and go out and find him.

But if the letter was real…

Peter didn’t even want to think about that. If the letter was real, then Mr. Stark had enacted another one of his half-baked save-Peter-at-any-cost plans that was putting his own life at risk.

He clenched his hand, crunching the letter in an irritated grip. He was really getting tired of those. More than tired of the. He was furious at them. They’d _talked_ about this, about costs that were too high and about not playing the sacrificial character.

_Don__’t be Yinsen_.

He wasn’t going to let Mr. Stark get away with it again. Even if the letter was real, he was still going to ignore it’s stupid instructions. He had to get up, finish the acid to free himself, then find Mr. Stark and knock some sense into him. Whether the letter was real or fake, he’d solve nothing by staying in bed.

Peter slid his legs off the mattress, rolling to the side and pushing himself into a sitting position. The cough he’d been suppressing burst out of him, and it was a few minutes before he could open his eyes again and breathe a little more clearly, trying not to look at the blood on the forearm he’d been using to cover his mouth. Nothing he could do about it now. He had more important things to worry about.

He mentally cataloged the aches and pains he’d have to work around that were flaring up. He felt a little light-headed, and gray spots floated in his vision, but both were fading the more he focused on breathing. The site of his missing ribs still hurt like hell. The shackles on the other side were more sore than yesterday, but bearable. There was a constant tickle in his throat and the desperate feeling of lungs that were only working at half capacity. Everything else was weak and shaky, likely from a lack of food as much as whatever else was clearly going on. His stomach grumbled angrily.

Not ideal, but he could work with it.

As his sight cleared complete, a half-dozen covered plates and a dozen water bottles on the floor by the bed drew his attention. Thoughts of the food being poisoned were quickly drowned out by a raging hunger and thirst. He’d take his chances.

He reached down slowly to grab one, looking to his left to see if the chain would allow it, then froze halfway down. The chain wasn’t suspended in the air between his ribs and the hole in the wall above the bed like it should be. In fact, there was nothing coming out of the hole at all.

He sat back up and lifted his shirt to confirm that yes, his lower left ribs were still being imminently threatened. Blood was smeared on his side around the chain but didn’t look to originate from there. Following the chain led to a sheared-off end after around two feet.

He stared at it on the bed next to him, completely dumbstruck. He couldn’t think of a single reason Mark would have allowed the chain to be cut. Exactly what sort of deal with the devil had Mr. Stark made?

And he hadn’t even left Peter a single message or clue in his letter. Did Mr. Stark not trust him to help with his plan? Or had he not had the chance to come up with a plan?

Anger was simmering again, anger that Mr. Stark would just move on without him, regardless of the situation, but it slowly cooled as the mask kept pumping air through. He knew he didn’t look well enough to be playing any sort of part, so he couldn’t really blame Mr. Stark for not employing his help. He clearly hadn’t even thought Peter would wake up again before help came, whatever that meant. He could still blame him for playing a stupid part on his own though.

He grabbed a water bottle from the floor and the closest plate, which turned out to be a cold bowl of tomato soup with some bread. He immediately pulled off the oxygen mask and ate without question. Slower than he wanted to, on account of his empty stomach not being used to so much food, but he worked through four entire plates of various foods before he was done.

By the time he was feeling full, he guessed it had been half an hour. More than a few minutes without the oxygen mask made him dizzy, so he’d had to take a lot of breaks. Now he wanted nothing more than to collapse back to the bed and sleep for a week, but he had work to do. Who knew what had happened to Mr. Stark in those thirty minutes he’d taken. He couldn’t waste any more.

Pulling the IVs from his inner elbows, he took a few last deep breaths from the oxygen mask, then placed it next to him on the bed. He tucked the sharp end of the rib chain into his pocket so it wouldn’t catch on anything and moved into the lab.

The entire room had been ransacked. Pillaged. Cannibalized for parts. All of the forging supplies were gone, leaving a light spot in the corner that had previously been filled with the dark metal of tongs and hammers. Empty camera stands in the corners spoke of the hardware being pried from its places in a hurry. The more standard lab fare had been left alone, apparently not deemed valuable enough to carry away.

The lab door was cracked open, lending an eerie, surreal air to the whole place. What the hell had happened here?

He moved to the door and peered out into the hallway. Completely silent. Straining his hearing told him he was completely alone.

He might be able to just walk out of here. Get a feel for the layout and then dart out the first emergency exit he came across.

But that would leave Mr. Stark who knows where. He had to get to him first. And he couldn’t just walk around an enemy base weaponless. Maybe at full strength he’d risk it, but not today. Not like this.

He ought to work under the assumption that there was at least one locked door or other type of restraint between him and Mr. Stark, so his acid was still called for even though his own chain had been cut. And the possible explosive combinations he’d been avoiding might be worth weaponizing too.

He left the door cracked open behind him as he turned back to the tables, unable to shake the feeling that it would lock behind him if he let it close. His work table still held most of the promising chemicals he’d been exploring. It shouldn’t take him more than an hour to accomplish his two tasks: first, amplify the reaction of his acid so it would eat through more caminium much faster. Second, assemble and package some volatile compounds into an offensive weapon like the first explosion.

A coughing spell added gray spots to his vision and a third task to his list. Get back to the oxygen mask before he passed out. Just moving around the lab for a few minutes cataloging what had been taken had exhausted him.

He moved to the cell and sat back on the bed, strapping the mask back around his face and taking as deep of breaths as he could manage. After a minute of careful breathing that forced the gray spots to retreat, he picked up the whole oxygen tank contraption that had been stashed at the head of the bed. It was on one of those wheeled carts for easy transportation, which Peter was grateful for as he wheeled it into the lab. It made him feel like a geriatric patient, but it was better than having to lug the thing around in his arms. Then it was back to work.

Working in isolation, with nothing but his over-active spider sense to keep an eye on the lab around him, was spooky. He’d unconsciously grown used to the hissing of the forge, the chirring of the cameras as they rotated on their bases, the steady breathing and heartbeat of Mr. Stark across the room when he focused.

The closer his projects came to completion, the more Peter’s thoughts and anxieties were inexplicably drawn to Afghanistan. His mind buzzed with questions as his formula grew closer and closer to usable.

Is this was Mr. Stark had felt like when the Iron Man suit was almost finished? Desperate, sure he was going to be interrupted, positive everything was going to fall apart at the last minute? Or had he been confident, sure that his plans were going to pay off, putting all his faith effortlessly on Iron Man’s shoulders.

And did it really matter? This wasn’t Afghanistan.

Iron Man had saved Mr. Stark in that cave, but Spider-Man had barely made an appearance in this one. In fact, his heightened metabolism requirements and ability to break out of normal, human restraints (if there were such a thing) had made things exponentially worse.

A superhero identity wasn’t getting them out of this. Not this time.

This time, hopefully, somehow, it would be Peter Parker’s smarts and inventiveness that freed them.

Once they got out, maybe he could use this acid for his next science fair project. Or maybe Mr. Stark would help him get a patent on it, this time with only his name on the paper. Maybe something good would come out of this.

Knowing the man, Peter was sure Mr. Stark had been similarly excited about his first Iron Man suit, no matter how dire the situation. He was an inventor down to his core. Still in the cave, he’d probably had plans to patent some things, improve on other things once he had real tools. He’d known what the future could hold.

And then Yinsen had chosen to buy him more time, better odds to reach that future, with his life.

Peter’s excitement for the future grew a little hollower. Peter still didn’t know the details of what had happened, but he didn’t need to. Nothing the future could hold for him was worth Mr. Stark sacrificing his life for it. If this acid got them both out together, that would be enough for him.

Another three experiments got him an acid that burned through caminium three times faster than his last formula. Well, not exactly burn through. It was designed to eat away at non-organic materials like iron, but it expanded then hardened when it encountered anything organic.

Like the inclusions that were littered throughout caminium.

When the acid encountered those inclusions, it almost literally turned the metal to dust. Mark was so proud of his stupid metal? Peter would teach him not to put all his eggs in one basket.

He secured the chemical base in one palm-sized bottle with an eyedropper and the catalyst in another, rubbber-banding them together for ease of use later and labeling them “Caminium Acid Pt 1” and “Caminium Acid Pt 2” in permanent marker.

The straight-forward labels were a habit after a dozen reminders from Mr. Stark about lab safety over the months. He’d be proud of him for remembering on his own now. You know, if he weren’t too busy surrendering to a psychopath to try and protect his intern.

The intercom system in the hallway bursting to life startled Peter from his work: “Crew Two,” a man’s voice sounded tinnily, “You should be packing up the fourth floor right now. Kenneth is looking for you near the armory. T minus forty-five minutes before chopper six takes off. Keep your radios on you.”

The sound cut off with a bustle of static, before going quiet again.

People were packing up. Choppers were leaving. Five had already left if they were going in order. Who knows how many left to go. Maybe Mr. Stark was due to be on one. Maybe he’d already _been_ on one while Peter was messing around in the lab. He was giving himself fifteen minutes to arrange whatever explosive weapons he could, then he was taking to the hallways.

It only took him ten to come up with two chemicals that created a sizable flame and hiss of smoke when combined in small amounts. He was willing to bet a larger combination would take out more of the lab than the original explosion had, not that Peter could afford the time, danger, or notice that testing it would cause.

He grabbed ten bottles, dividing them out into five pairs and rubber-banding them together, putting a sizable amount of the chemical into the proper bottles and labeling each set, “Grenade.”

Mr. Stark would be losing a gasket if he knew Peter was about to take untested explosives into a possible combat situation, but Mr. Stark wasn’t here. He didn’t get a say anymore.

Now he just had to find a way of carrying them that minimized the odds of one of them getting broken open and blowing everything to kingdom come.

Inspiration striking, he dragged the oxygen tank back to the room and pulled the Iron Man pillowcase off the single pillow. Wrapping each bottle set tightly in rags, he placed them all in the pillowcase, along with the unwrapped acid set.

Not as good as a backpack, but it would do. He slung it over a shoulder with one hand and grabbed the handle of the oxygen tank with the other. He felt like an idiot, like an idiot dressed as an ancient hobo heading out west or something.

But he couldn’t leave the tank in the lab; he’d exhaust himself too quickly. He’d have to wheel it along and drop it for a few minutes if he had to fight and make sure to keep the grenades away from it.

He stood at the door for a moment, steeling his nerves. He still felt cold and shaky, not in any state to steal secretively through an enemy lair.

If this were a video game, he wouldn’t dare move forward without a health potion or one of those magical long-night rests that healed a warrior’s wounds.

If this were his normal life, he wouldn’t dare undertake this without his Spider-Man suit and backup from Mr. Stark.

He had none of that right now though. What he had right now were the results of Peter Parker’s chemical knowhow, Spider-Man’s failing strength, and the burning desire they shared to save the man who seemed so set on saving them.

Mr. Stark had tried to save Peter too many times already. Now it was Peter’s turn to try and save them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is coming on Wednesday I think. 
> 
> Ask me something on Tumblr if you want to know. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there, and I don't bite.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and thanks doubly for commenting!


	29. Abandoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He pressed on, the building’s deserted atmosphere keeping him on edge. There was something supremely disconcerting about being left somewhere, surrounded only by things people had left behind, had deemed not worth taking with them. Mr. Stark had only left people behind because he thought help was coming, so it wasn’t the same. Not really. But he still couldn’t help but feel the littlest bit abandoned. 

The hallways echoed the quiet churning of the oxygen tank’s wheels, putting Peter’s senses on edge. But there was no one else around to notice. Not a whisper, not a footstep, not a heartbeat. He’d made four turns and peered into eight rooms with doors ajar and hadn’t seen another soul.

All the rooms were either emptied or picked over, like the lab had been, which lent an eerie air to the whole place, the stale air of people leaving in a hurry.

He opened the door to the next empty room and froze, staring at the lab he had just left, had somehow circled back to somehow, trapped in whatever labyrinth Mark had constructed.

His grip tightened reflexively on the doorknob, warping the metal, before he realized there was no burn on the floor and no ancient computer on the table Peter had preferred.

Somehow this was a different, nearly identical lab.

The realization that he wasn’t stumbling around in circles was only reassuring until another realization struck. Multiple labs might mean multiple captives. There had to be a reason Mr. Stark hadn’t been put in this lab, whether that was some part of the messed-up deal he’d made or a matter of practicality since this lab had already been occupied. There weren’t any burns, bloodstains, or personal effects to let him know if this room had actually been used, but the thought haunted him even after he closed the door. Did he have more people to rescue than Mr. Stark?

He checked the attached cell to be sure, but no one was inside.

He pressed on, the building’s deserted atmosphere keeping him on edge. There was something supremely disconcerting about being left somewhere, surrounded only by things people had left behind, had deemed not worth taking with them. Mr. Stark had only left people behind because he thought help was coming, so it wasn’t the same. Not really. But he still couldn’t help but feel the littlest bit abandoned. 

The next hallway brought him past a push-bar door propped open with a rubber wedge. Peter walked up to it, shivering at the frigid breeze that blew through the crack, and pulled it open.

A view of a foggy forest stretched out all around him, mist weaving through the treetops like special effects in a horror film and blocking the view of anything more than a hundred yards out.

Breathtaking.

Literally, it was taking his breath away, the cold air making his lungs seize up a little. He took a last look around for other buildings or fences or people but found nothing. Ducking back inside, he closed the door almost all the way and stepped further down the hallway, where he doubled over, trying to cough up a lung as quietly as he possibly could.

The coughing eased, no one apparently alerted by the sound, and Peter glanced at the door again.

He could run. Right now. Leave and try to find help to bring back for Mr. Stark.

It was tempting to be any sort of free, but based on the trees and the fog, they were likely in some remote forest on a mountain. Peter’s current state and lack of wilderness knowledge didn’t speak well to those odds. And he couldn’t leave without Mr. Stark. He’d be gone by the time Peter ever made it back with help, _if_ Peter ever made it back.

So close and yet so far.

Making a mental note of where the door was, Peter continued wheeling his oxygen tank down hallways until he reached a stairwell, once again, with the door propped open. That had to be a security hazard or something. And terrible for the heating bills.

He slipped inside, listening carefully to the floors above and below him as he paused on the landing. Nothing beneath that he could hear, but there were people on the floors above. That was good if he was trying to get down, get out, and run for it. But he wasn’t. He had to find Mr. Stark, who was likely being held under guard somewhere. Or under torture. Or had already been taken somewhere else.

The wall next to the door had a map of the floor he’d just been on, the first pieces of honest luck Peter felt he’d come across so far. It was marked as an emergency exit map, showing the fastest ways out off the floor. The words “Guild of Masters Facility 713 Alleghany County, Virginia” stretched across the top in thick black type, the words “third floor” in italics underneath it.

The relief of knowing what state he was in nearly took his breath away. Virginia. That wasn’t too far from New York. It wasn’t Mexico or Russia. Sure, “Guild of Masters” felt like something out one of his history textbooks, and the daunting implication of 712 other facilities around the world played at the back of his mind, but he could handle Virginia.

The rest of the map showed hallways and rooms, but the only ones labeled were the two labs, named Crucible 1, where Peter and Tony had been working, and Crucible 2. There were stairwells on both sides of the building, and an elevator next to the stairwell that Peter wasn’t on. Hopefully that meant most people would be using the elevators and leaving this stairwell alone.

Virginia. The thought actually made him smile. If they could get a helicopter, they could probably fly all the way back to New York without stopping, assuming Mr. Stark knew how to fly a helicopter. The landing was above them somewhere—he’d heard the chopper landing when Mr. Stark had been brought in—so that’s where he was headed. He’d just have to do some sleuthing to find out where Mr. Stark was and then…fight past some guards and steal a helicopter? Something like that.

As he took to the stairs, hauling up the heavy oxygen tank so he wouldn’t bump noisily against things, he could almost hear Mr. Stark’s angry voice echoing in his head. He would hate this plan, wouldn’t even call it a plan, would call it stupid, reckless, and dangerous. Especially the untested, homemade grenades, which were basically his only weapon. All Peter had were objectives and tools, and leaping forward without a plan involving both of them was a recipe for disaster.

But so was sitting around waiting to be found by Mark’s men. He couldn’t just stay put, so he might as well wander the facility as sneakily as he could with an oxygen tank and see what he could find out.

Maybe if he did get caught, they’d throw him back in a room with Mr. Stark, who would probably ream him out for being so stupid, but two could play at that game. If Mr. Stark started lecturing him about bad plans, Peter was liable to start lecturing right back. What kind of stupid plan had “leave the kid in the cell and get kidnapped again” been anyway?

He was panting when he reached the landing. The food he’d had in the cell had gone a long way toward giving him energy to move, but too much exertion still made his lungs burn. He took a few deep, calming breaths before putting his ear to the cracked door of the fourth floor and listening.

Sounds echoed from the hallway, and Peter focused his hearing, trying to tune out the hiss and click of the oxygen mask. The footsteps of at least three people sounded over each other as they shuffled around, and random thumps and sliding sounds indicated a lot of things being moved.

Peter sat, listening and catching his breath as things were moved around, the footsteps thankfully sticking to a small area relatively far from the stairs. If people were on this floor, Mr. Stark might be on this floor, although he could still be on the last floor still above them. Peter’s legs were the smallest bit shaky after the last flight of stairs, so he was happy to prolong climbing another set if there was even a small chance he could learn something from these movers in the next five minutes or locate Mr. Stark.

Two minutes later, the voices started.

“Be careful with those! They’re on loan,” the first one said.

“I am being careful,” a raspy voice responded.

“Wrap ‘em in some newspaper before putting ‘em in the box, moron,” First said, “or they’ll knock together and trigger each other.”

Raspy’s muttered, “Fine,” was followed by rustling newspaper and another minute of silence.

First spoke again, much more casually this time. “You know you next station yet?”

“I’m flying through to Rochester. You?”

“Back to the main lab. See if anyone there needs a tech guy.”

“People always need tech guys,” Raspy said, “You’ll be fine.”

A new pair of footsteps approached from the far end of the building and joined the old ones.

“Chopper Two is almost at capacity,” the new voice said. “You want us to finish it off with these boxes or head up and start packing up your office?”

“Use these boxes.” Mark’s familiar voice sent shivers down Peter’s spine. It wasn’t the voice he’d been hoping to hear, but he felt a little better knowing where the enemy was on this battlefield.

“I’m using the high-security chopper for my office once we’re done in here,” Mark continued. “Then we’ll fill it up with whatever is left on the top floor. Everything else is already taken care of.”

The new footsteps had barely faded off toward the elevators again when Raspy sighed and asked, “Can’t we bring Ramirez back in to help? He’s not doing anything.”

“Guarding a victim _is_ doing something,” Mark said, annoyance coloring his words, his harsh voice leaving no room for retort.

A victim. That had to be Mr. Stark they were talking about, unless there had been some other victim in Crucible 2 before they started moving everything.

“No!” Mark’s anger made Peter jump painfully, even though it was still far away. “Pack those separately. Those two shelves go to the hangar when we’re done, but don’t load them up. The Biology Masters will pick them up if they get here before the Avengers do.”

A different shiver worked its way down Peter’s spine.

The Avengers were coming.

First chuckled. “That’s a race I wouldn’t want to be in.”

That was an understatement. A race against the Avengers was one they should want to be a thousand miles away from when it started. Whoever these Biology Masters were, they had their work cut out for them.

“The prize makes it worth the risk,” Mark said.

“You’re just saying that because they took your first price,” First retorted jokingly. “You get the prize without the risk if they grab him first.”

Grab _him_? Were they talking about Mr. Stark?

“Dunno,” Raspy said. “He looked about five minutes from death on the feed, mask or no mask. There might not be a prize left by the time anyone gets here.”

Wait, were they talking about _him_? Peer’s eyes widened, heart rate kicking up a notch. Some crazy biologists were racing the Avengers to come and grab him, and were willing to pay a good price by the sound of it. That was…disturbing. Both the idea of being sold for any reason, but moreso the idea of being sold to biologists who probably wanted to study his spider DNA and abilities. Not happening.

“Still worth the risk,” Mark said, and Peter had to disagree. If the risk for a villain was going head to head with the Avengers, it would take a whole lot more than Spider-Man to make it worth it.

Peter stood up, having heard enough. If the Avengers were coming and Mark knew about it, they had already made plans to keep Mr. Stark away from them, and Peter’s new plan was to mess up those plans. Starting with Mark’s office they had mentioned being on the floor above them. It was the next place Mark was heading, but he wasn’t there yet and hadn’t packed it up, so if there was anything incriminating or useful, Peter needed to check there first. Then he could track down Mr. Stark, who was apparently being guarded by a Ramirez, maybe also on the fifth floor. Either way, Peter wasn’t going to try sneaking around the one floor he knew Mark was on until he’d exhausted all other options. He hefted the oxygen tank up in his left hand, slung the loaded pillowcase over his other shoulder, and started climbing the stairs.

His ribs were aching by the time he reached the top, but he only allowed himself a break for a few minutes to look at the map of the fifth floor. It was easier to memorize than floor three’s had been because the large helicopter hanger took up more than half the floor. The hangar was labeled, along with “Crucible 3,” but the remaining three hallways that filled the areas closest to Peter’s stairwell was filled with unmarked rooms. One of which had to be Mark’s office. It wouldn’t take longer than fifteen minutes for Peter to find the right room, assuming he didn’t run into anyone, and he couldn’t hear anyone nearby.

If Mr. Stark was on this floor, he was probably being held in the Crucible cell, under guard; most of the other rooms he’d come across weren’t equipped with locks. He and Mr. Stark needed to end up at the hangar eventually, so they could steal a helicopter, but it would be hard not to be spotted over there. People had to be using the elevator and maybe even the staircase over there to prep things for the move. The closer they got to the hangar, the likelier the chance of discovery became. They’d need a solid plan by then.

For now, the plan was to raid Mark’s office, which was one of the nearby rooms, take care of the guard and rescue Mr. Stark, then make a break for the hangar. Mr. Stark could help him fine tune the details when they were together again.

The rooms in the first hallway were completely empty, but when he opened the door to the first room in the second hallway and spotted Mr. Star’s Spider-Bot on a classy, modern-looking desk in the middle of the room, he knew he’d found the right room.

His oxygen tank bumped over the threshold of the office as he stepped inside. Bookshelves that matched the desk lined one wall of the room, filled sparsely with books, trinkets, and tools. Two large windows on the far wall gave Peter another view of the misty forest beyond that surrounded the building.

He approached the desk and picked up the Spider-Bot, turning it over in his hands. The circuit board Mr. Stark had broken trying to jam into the robot lay in pieces on the desk, but a nearly identical replica, made to the proper size this time, was slotted inside. A soldering iron, tweezers, and a screwdriver lay on the desk alongside an open textbook showing various circuit board diagrams.

Mark was repairing the Spider-Bot. Peter would have guessed he’d just thrown him in the trash, but apparently he was trying to learn from it. Peter tucked the bot and broken circuit board pieces into the pillowcase, reaching next for a light gray manila folder on the corner of the desk labeled “Stark - Bot.”

Some basic information about Mr. Stark was scrawled on the inside cover: full name, birthday, a date from a few days ago, and the phrase “robotics and electronics.” The papers inside the folder were a collection of copies of lab notes in Mr. Stark’s handwriting, many of them with notes from Mark scrawled in the margins.

He shut the folder, recalling the end of an intellectual property rant Mr. Stark had spouted off last month, and grabbed the folder underneath it. He clenched his jaw when he saw his own name on the label: “Parker - Chemical Acid?”

That question mark wasn’t necessary. It was definitely an acid, no question about it. He flipped the folder open, noting some of the same details written in pen on the inside cover: his name, his birthday, the day he’d started work in the lab, and the word “chemistry” to show his specialty.

But a large word scribbled at the bottom is what really drew his eye. All caps. Thick permanent marker.

**ABANDONED**.

He swallowed the sick feeling that word put in his throat and turned to the papers in the folder. He’d expected it, but still, seeing Mark’s cramped handwriting all over copies of his own notes made his stomach twist. It started with the brainstorming he’d done on the first day and lead all the way to the diagrams of the tabletop and puddle he’d drawn when studying the chemical makeup of the explosion.

Peter had never been particularly tidy with his notes, finding it helpful to write down any though that might be even remotely related. A lot of his more tangential thoughts had large red question marks scribbled next to them now, or semi-related chemical equations that showed Mark trying to figure out Peter’s thought processes. The marking got more frequent and aggressive as he flipped through the folder until he reached the last page, which had a giant black X drawn over it in the same thick, permanent marker from the inside cover.

Mark had been studying Peter like a lab rat, like some creepy science experiment, and the fact that he’d found him lacking sat heavily in Peter’s stomach. Not because he cared what Mark thought, but because if Mark thought nothing of him, he had no leverage. Which was what he’d suspected, but it didn’t feel great to have it confirmed.

If Mark ran into a loose Mr. Stark, he’d try and capture him again, probably be willing to strike a deal. If Mark ran into a loose Peter Parker in the facility, he’d shoot him on sight. Or tell someone else to shoot him on sight since Peter had never actually seen Mark with a gun. His only hope for survival had always been as a footnote in the deals Mark struck with Mr. Stark.

He slapped the folder shut and slid both his and Mr. Stark’s folders into the pillowcase. He never wanted to see any of it ever again, but more than that he wanted to make sure Mark never saw any of it ever again.

Stepping around the desk and pushing the chair out of the way, Peter quickly opened the drawer on the left. He’d take anything they could use to escape or to arrest Mark later; he’d dispose of anything Mark could use against them.

The top drawer held only regular office supplies, peppered through by tiny screwdrivers, nuts, and bolts. Not unlike the average desk drawer in Mr. Stark’s lab, actually. The bottom left drawer was very different. It had a plastic bottle with four of the little fly robots he’d seen at the party buzzing around in it, two folded up face cloaks, and a laptop.

He immediately put the bottle of fly bots in the pillowcase. The face cloaks went next, and although they looked foldable, they were surprisingly stuff, almost like card stock that had a thin box of electronics stretching across one corner, probably the part that went near the ear. He’d figure it out later with Mr. Stark.

He opened the laptop on the desk, but it was locked, so Peter left it alone, feeling the need to hurry. His spider sense had kept up an uncomfortably loud buzz of warning since he’d woken up, and although nothing about it had changed, every minute he spent in this office made the image of Mark storming in and catching him more and more of a possibility. If that happened, his best bet would probably be to jump out the window and climb the building, but he’d be lucky to get the pillowcase or the oxygen tank out with him. He definitely wouldn’t be able to bring both.

The sea of gray manila folders that greeted him when he opened the deep desk drawer on the right side caught his breath in his throat. There had to be fifty or sixty.

They couldn’t be.

But they were.

Each folder had a name and a project listed on the label.

“Wyatt - Organic Material Bonds”

“Yin - RNA Interference”

“Hansen - Fire Resistance”

“Korhonen - Genetics-based Crop Rotation”

“Ramirez - Targeting Program”

He pulled out a handful, flipping through the files with building anxiety. Each folder was filled with annotated copies of lab notes in various handwritings and languages, and the inside cover of each folder had a large, all-caps word scrawled in marker on it, the most common ones being RECRUITED, ABANDONED, LEVERAGED, and DECEASED.

Deceased as in Mark had killed them or they’d since died of natural causes? Some of the dates in the folders were from more than a decade ago, so natural causes wasn’t out of the question. But although Peter would have expected to see a more villainous word like TERMINATED if Mark had killed them outright, he wouldn’t put it past the man to label murder at his hands as a natural cause.

He flipped through the folder on organic material bonds, his heart racing when he realized he recognized the work. Mark had published something almost identical to this in a journal he’d read. Peter had even remarked to Mr. Stark how odd it was that he hadn’t taken the discovery further, hadn’t made the obvious medical connection that Dr. Cho had come along and made a year later.

This explained all of it. It hadn’t been Mark’s work to start with. He’d stolen it, and he’d barely had enough understanding of it to do that by the look of it, never mind expound on its connections to other fields. He was trying to internalize the research he was stealing, but there was too much of it. Which was a disturbing thought in and of itself.

The more folders he flipped through, the more work he recognized from the extensive publication history Mark kept in the lab. Fifteen folders in, he forced himself to stop, sinking into the chair next to him and pressing a hand to his wheezing chest. Anxiety and anger were making his breaths faster, shallower, and he couldn’t do that to himself right now. He had to stop. He’d learned enough.

Mark wasn’t a genius, and he definitely wasn’t an Oppenheimer. Not in the ways he claimed to be or wanted to be. He was just keeping all the geniuses locked away in the basement, stealing any ideas they came up with to save their lives.

And apparently _recruiting_ some of them, which just blew Peter’s mind. That was what Mark was trying with Mr. Stark, but had it actually worked on people before? What kind of people would fall for that? How could any just _do that_? If you got captured by evil, you didn’t decide to become evil yourself. Everyone knew that.

Well, Peter thought everyone in the world knew that, but apparently he was wrong. He’d somehow stumbled across a villain factory. He’d see at least a half dozen RECRUITED marks in the small stack of folders he’d flipped through. Would he have to track those people down once they’d escaped and after he took care of Mark?

Yes. Peter shifted thing in the pillowcase so he could line the bottom of it with the gray folders, not caring how heavy it made the bag. He wasn’t leaving a single one of these people and their ideas behind. And once he got out of here, he was either going to track them down and save them or track them down and jail them.

He yanked out the last set of folders from the drawer, freezing when he saw a small handgun that had been concealed beneath the folders. An unbidden mental image of him holding the gun to Mark’s head made him flinch, the folders in his hands fluttering from the motion. He’d never, even if Mark deserved it.

But Mr. Stark might. He’d said as much as the first day, and he hadn’t even known about all the other people then, all the other victims. If Peter took the gun and gave it to Mr. Stark, just stepped aside and let him do what he wanted, could he really be blamed for that? It wasn’t him pulling the trigger, and the world would clearly be better off without Mark in it.

The image in his mind returned this time with Mr. Stark firing the gun, blood spattering his face as Mark slumped against the wall. The wrongness of the image was even more stark. He couldn’t let that happen if there was any way to avoid it. Even serial killers belonged in jail where they could be tried, where they could give closure to victims, where they could give up information on associates and unknown victims. No matter how many bad things Mark had done, Peter wasn’t a killer, and he couldn’t hide behind Mr. Stark’s rage-fueled willingness to kill as a shield for his own conscience.

Grabbing the gun, he moved to one of the windows and shoved it open, dropping the gun to the grassy ground below. It would be found later, probably unbroken, but if Mark came running in here looking for a weapon to use against them, he wouldn’t find that one.

The computer on the desk gave Peter one final idea. He flipped it over and used one of the screwdrivers Mark had been using on Mr. Stark’s Spider-Bot to unscrew the back cover and pull out the hard drive. He reattached the cover and put the laptop back in the drawer before putting the hard drive in the pillowcase too. If anyone had been left out of a folder, that hard drive would have their information. And probably a lot more information besides.

Peter looked around, scanning the bookshelves quickly and deciding he’d already taken the most valuable things here. Time to go.

If he weren’t still trying to keep a low profile, he’d use one of his grenades to blow up Mark’s office right now, make sure the man never got another second of use from all the information he’d stolen. Maybe he and Mr. Stark would do it on their way out.

Peter’s spider sense was still an annoying hum in the back of his brain as he slipped back out into the hallway, arms full with the loaded pillowcase and the oxygen tank. The guard they’d mentioned was named Ramirez. Possibly the same Ramirez who’d had a file in Mark’s desk. It didn’t really matter though. Whether he’d been through a Crucible and then “recruited” or hired in more traditionally mercenarial ways, it didn’t change the fact that he was both a bad guy and the only thing standing between him and Mr. Stark. He’d never know what hit him.


	30. Fistfight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't at all how Spider-Man liked to operate.
> 
> He couldn't even rely on his usual morale-boosting taunts, partly because he didn't want to waste the oxygen but mostly because he didn't want to waste the silence. This had to be quick, quiet, and stealthy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, but the next two will be much longer. We're almost to the climax of the story!

This wasn’t at all how Spider-Man liked to operate.

Peter leaned against a hallway wall, about twenty feet and one turn away from Crucible 3’s cell and the guard, Ramirez, who was standing outside. The guard’s boredom was audible in the scuffing of one of his feet rhythmically across the ground and the rub of a leather jacket against a wall. He wasn’t aware anything was amiss in the facility, or that anything was about to be, and Peter had to take full advantage of that. All while employing an entirely new set of fight tactics, since his Spider-Man go-to’s were out. No web shooters. No climbing the walls, thanks to the heavy oxygen tank and his own core injuries. Moving around was hard enough right-side-up.

He couldn’t even rely on his usual morale-boosting taunts, partly because he didn’t want to waste the oxygen but mostly because he didn’t want to waste the silence. This had to be quick, quiet, and stealthy.

The only weapons Peter had were the bottle grenades he’d thrown together, and he didn’t actually want to kill the guard. Those had been made more as distractions. Or things to be used to blast through walls or something. If he used one now, it was likely to take out the entire cell—Mr. Stark included—along with the guard. And even if it didn’t, the attention a huge explosion would attract would wreck any hope they had of unnoticed escape.

Which made things hard. Spider-Man wasn’t known for being an explosively loud superhero, but he wasn’t known for his subtly either. He stuck to a casual middle ground. Not any louder than he had to be; not any quieter than he wanted to be.

His best bet was to lure the guard around the corner and surprise him, go for a quick take down. He silently set his pillowcase of supplies down across the hall where it would be out of the way, steeling himself and taking a few last breaths from the oxygen mask before pulling it from his face. The stale air of the hallway was stifling by comparison, but the mask would only obscure his vision and get tangled during a fight. Now he was on the clock, just like the time he’d fought that mugger who’d almost garroted him. He’d easily fought without air for a full minute then, he could manage that long now. Probably.

He set the mask down on the pillowcase and quickly moved to the corner. He crouched close to the ground, still concealed, and tapped on the floor loudly.

Ramirez’ foot-scuffing stopped, and Peter tapped again. He stuck the hand closest to the wall against the cool metal, adhering it so he’d have the leverage to pull the guard off his feet. Slow footsteps approached, then paused right before the corner.

This was it. His best chance.

Ramirez swung around the corner in a ready stance, gun pointed down the hallway several feet over Peter’s head.

His eyes flicked down to Peter, but before he could readjust his aim, Peter grabbed his back leg and pulled it into the front, toppling him straight to the floor on his back. Peter was moving before the man landed, relishing in the feeling of movement and purpose. It felt good to be fighting again, made him feel a little more like himself.

He leaped over the guard, landing next to him to pull the gun from his hand and throw it against the wall with enough strength it broke into pieces. Good. One less thing to worry about.

Then Ramirez reared both legs up and twisted to the side, planting his feet on Peter’s chest, and Peter suddenly had another thing to worry about. Ramirez kicked out, his back braced against the wall, and Peter flew backwards, landing awkwardly on the bag and oxygen tank he’d put down earlier. Something crunched in the bag and Peter’s heart nearly stopped. That had better not be one of the grenades, although he’s already already know if it had been.

Ramirez scrambled to his hands and knees, glaring at the pieces of the gun before turning to Peter, who was desperately trying to free his left arm from the tubes of the oxygen tank he’d gotten tangled in.

Peter yanked his hand free with a loud pop as Ramirez tackled him. One shoulder blade smashed painfully on the cylinder of the oxygen tank, sending it spinning away as his back struck the ground instead. Then Ramirez was on top of him, one large hand gripping Peter’s throat as the other fumbled for a pocket.

He couldn’t breathe. Again. The pressure of blood building in his skull was already palpable. He grabbed Ramirez’s wrist and pushed, loosening his grip marginally, but then the guard’s other fist was swinging in and Peter had to throw up an arm to stop it from colliding with his head.

“You should have stayed put,” Ramirez said, tightening his grip as Peter’s fingers scrabbled against his hold. “No one escapes the Crucible.”

Peter barely managed to squeeze out a hoarse, “You…did,” as he tried to worm a leg free to push Ramirez back. It wouldn’t have been hard for Spider-Man to contort out of the grip on a average day, but right now it felt impossible.

“I was freed,” Ramirez said, throwing a punch to Peter’s cracked ribs that made stars burst in his vision.

But he must have also punched the spiked chain because he immediately recoiled the hand with a look of pain, blood on his knuckles.

Taking full advantage of his enemy’s distraction, Peter released Ramirez’s hand, instead striking at the locked elbow of the arm that was strangling him. The arm collapsed and Peter pulled the man forward by his shirt collar, simultaneously planting his left heel on the ground and thrusting up with his leg as hard as he could.

Ramirez flipped over onto his back, wrenching Peter’s neck as he was finally forced to let go.

Peter gasped for air, the relief at the meager amount he brought in a fraction of what it should have been. He started coughing, but pushed himself to his feet, unwilling to give Ramirez another chance to get the upper hand. The man was just getting to his own feet when Peter stepped over and delivered the strongest uppercut he could manage. Ramirez’s head hit the wall behind him and he slid to the ground, out cold.

The man’s faint heartbeat registered reassuringly in the back of Peter’s mind. He’d be out for a while, but Peter would give just about anything for a pair of web shooters to restrain the man longer than that.

He had more important issues to deal with though. Like breathing. And his aching ribs and shoulder blade. And his bruised neck that felt like it might disconnect his head from the rest of his body any minute. And breathing.

The gray spots were back in his vision. He reached over and grabbed the oxygen mask, putting it to his face and taking two deep breaths.

Nothing happened. No puff of air, no hiss and click, no fog, just the ever-present feeling of dying lungs.

Looking down through his fading vision, he toyed with the tubes, quickly finding a loose end that was supposed to attach somewhere, but he couldn’t tell where. His hands were shaking so badly, he probably wouldn’t be able to fix it even if he found the right spot.

Mr. Stark could help. He was unguarded now, just one locked door away. It wouldn’t take long to get that open, right?

He started dragging his supplies to the door but only made it a few feet past the corner before realizing it was all too heavy.

The oxygen tank dropped to the floor with a loud clang as Peter fumbled inside the pillowcase for the bottles of acid. Then the bag dropped too.

Working at the lids of both bottles, he stumbled to the door, gray spots already stealing half his vision.

He could barely see enough to read which bottle was part one, but he found it and released an entire eyedropper of the chemical on the lock, screwing the lid on before opening the second bottle and doing the same thing.

The ensuing hiss of smoke and flash of light finished blinding him, and he had to put the lid on by feel. Once he’d done that, he shoved against the door, feeling it give a little as the acid did its work.

Another shove.

Another.

Another.

The door gave way, dumping Peter clumsily into the room on one knee just inside the door. Both his hands hit the floor to keep him upright, the bottles clanking loudly against the ground but not breaking. His whole body felt heavy, barely able to hold itself up.

“Kid?”

Mr. Stark’s voice and the rattle of chains greeted him. He looked up, peering around the gray spots. Mr. Stark didn’t look hurt, just worried. That made sense; Peter was worried too.

Mr. Stark’s hands were cuffed together in front of him and chained to the wall across the room. He’d reached the end of the chain, still a good six feet from Peter, who moved to stand and made it fractions of an inch before shaking, oxygen-starved limbs told him that wasn’t going to happen.

“Kid, what are you doing here?” Mr. Stark’s voice said, and Peter found the energy to roll his eyes. Couldn’t he recognize a rescue operation when he was in the middle of one?

Unable to move or respond and with Mr. Stark trapped on the other side of the room, Peter did the only thing left to him. Muttering a faint, “Acid,” he slid the bottles across the room to Mr. Stark’s feet, the clatter of glass bumping against stone echoing in his ears as the action overbalanced him and he collapsed to the floor.

His head landed on one of his arms, facing the inside of the room. He should be able to see Mr. Stark, but the whole room was a blur. He’d slid the bottle far enough, right? His eyes wouldn’t focus to show him, but it was close enough. Had to be. Mr. Stark was smart. He’d get the message.

He could hear the man saying something, maybe asking a question, but it was too much work to pay attention. Much easier to give into the massive weight on his chest that was pulling him under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	31. Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Kid, what are you doing here?”
> 
> It was a stupid question since Peter was obviously staging some sort of rescue. He should have asked how the kid had gotten here, as in how had he gotten up off his deathbed, past at least one guard, and into Tony’s cell in the sorry state he was in.
> 
> Peter mumbled something and slid a pair of glass bottles across the floor to Tony without a word, his arms shaking so badly he looked ready to collapse.
> 
> Then the kid actually did collapse—his head striking the floor with a painful thud—and Tony stopped breathing.
> 
> Then Tony realized the kid had stopped breathing too—his chest was horrifyingly still—and Tony started counting.

Muffled banging down the hall roused Tony from sleep. He lay on the cell mattress, feeling vaguely irritated at whatever morons were dropping moving boxes loudly enough to wake him. He hoped at least they’d broken something valuable.

The noise outside stopped and Tony sat up, rather awkwardly because his hands were still cuffed together. He felt surprisingly well-rested. He’d spent hours stewing and pacing the length of the chain before succumbing to exhaustion on the extremely uninviting mattress. So how much of the 36-hour deadline he’d given Mark was left? It couldn’t be long now.

Tony checked his wrist out of habit, but there was no watch to tell him the time. He groaned and scrubbed the hand across his face, still blinking sleep from his eyes when a sound at the door drew his attention. The shadow of someone’s feet danced just outside and something was…was that hissing? Had someone come to collect him because time was up already?

The door slammed open and Peter burst through the door like a pale ghost, landing hard on one knee, his chest heaving visibly to draw in air.

“Kid!” Tony leaped to his feet and rushed toward Peter to keep him from falling over, but the chain reached its limit long before he got to him. It pulled him short so quickly that he almost hit himself in the face with his bound hands as he was yanked to a stop.

“Kid, what are you doing here?”

It was a stupid question since Peter was obviously staging some sort of rescue. He should have asked how the kid had gotten here, as in how had he gotten up off his deathbed, past at least one guard, and into Tony’s cell in the sorry state he was in.

Peter mumbled something and slid a pair of glass bottles across the floor to Tony without a word, his arms shaking so badly he looked ready to collapse.

Then the kid actually _did_ collapse—his head striking the floor with a painful thud—and Tony stopped breathing.

Then Tony realized the_ kid _had stopped breathing too—his chest was horrifyingly still—and Tony started counting.

The seconds passed too quickly as he toed the little bottles Peter had slid to him across the room until the chain had enough slack to allow him to reach down and pick it up off the ground. Peter’s untidy scrawl marred a white label on each bottle: Caminium Acid Pt 1 & 2. That genius kid must have finished his project. Now hopefully these handcuffs were made of caminium.

Nine seconds.

He wasn’t exactly sure what he was counting for, but Cho’s furious admonition in the limo the night of gala rang loud in his memory: “When someone passes out, we start timing!” What had she said that night? Six minutes until average brain death? That was his time limit then. Although he had no idea what to do if they neared it. Curse his entire life for not becoming something useful like a damn doctor.

He unscrewed the lid of the Part 1 bottle, pausing for two whole seconds trying to figure out how much he was supposed to use. Throwing caution to the wind, he twisted his wrists and emptied the eyedropper on the thinnest part of the left handcuff where it lay against his inner wrist. He immediately went back for another dropper full, emptying it onto the right handcuff, wincing when it dropped onto his skin, stinging painfully.

Twenty-seven seconds.

He closed the first bottle and opened the second, loading another full eyedropper. A few drops on the treated part of the handcuffs rewarded him with an immediate hiss, a billow of smoke, and the acid burning straight through the metal. The hot goop oozed onto his inner wrist where it burned even worse than before. He gritted his teeth, fighting the instinct to rub it away with his other hand, knowing he’d just smear the chemical reaction around, and went in for the other wrist.

Thirty-four seconds.

One eye still on Peter, who hadn’t moved an inch, Tony squeezed out a few drops, capping the second bottle as the reaction hiss impressively, once again burning when it reached his skin again. He didn’t stop to see how bad the marks it had left was, instead ripping the twisted handcuffs off and throwing them to the side.

He ran across the room, skidding to his knees at Peter’s side.

Forty-two seconds.

He rolled Peter onto his back, the lifeless flop of his head and blue-tinged lips not reassuring in the slightest. His neck was bright red like it had been wrung, but two fingers pressed to it revealed both an unnatural heat and a heartbeat thrumming reassuringly.

But Tony’s hand hovering over Peter’s mouth and nose could barely feel a breath. He reached a hand under Peter’s neck and tilted his chin up, opening the airway even more probably. He’d learned that in a CPR class ages ago. That had better be all he had to use from that class today.

Sixty-four seconds.

One out of the six minutes they had, gone.

He had to get the kid breathing again. And his best shot was to get the oxygen tank he’d probably left behind in the corner of the cell, thinking he could just tough it out. As much as he hated leaving the kid alone, he knew it would be minutes faster than trying to drag him down several sets of stairs. Minutes they couldn’t waste.

“I’ll be right back,” Tony said, slipping to the doorway and peering out.

A guard was unconscious on the floor at the end of the hallway, and Tony immediately approached. Next to him, oddly enough, lay the Iron Man pillowcase from the old cell, lumpy with mysterious cargo and—thank God-the oxygen tank and mask. He had no right to be this lucky, he thought as he grabbed the tank and dragged it back to the room.

Kneeling next to Peter, he pressed the mask to Peter’s flushed face, where it nestled into place like it knew exactly how important its job was. Tony lifted his head to snap the elastics into place, then gently laid it back down.

Ninety-seven seconds.

But no breath misted the plastic.

Oh god, was he too late?

He felt desperately for a pulse, both relieved and confused when he felt it, same as before. Why wasn’t it working? Was there an on switch or something? If only he were a damn doctor, he’d know how to work a damn oxygen tank.

Mark’s words from yesterday floated through his head unbidden.

_Death touches everything that you do, Stark. Death is your nature._

Not today, Tony thought firmly, as he frantically inspected the metal tank for clues. No way was he letting the kid die here, now, like this.

Had the tank run out? Peter was hopelessly screwed if that was the case. But a dial on the side indicated several hours left.

Aha! A tube hanging loose! It took seven seconds to locate the nozzle it belonged to and wiggle it back into place on the mask.

One-hundred and eighteen seconds.

The sudden fog of a tiny breath against the inside of the mask was the most beautiful thing Tony had ever seen.

Tony stopped counting.

An overwhelming wave of relief pushed him from his knees to a sitting position, a shaky hand pressed to his chest as if the force of his fingers could slow his racing heart. He sat, breathing alongside Peter for a minute, watching the plastic mask opaquing rhythmically with each inhale, watching the color come back to Peter’s face and lips, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

And trying to come up with a plan.

Mark obviously hadn’t delivered the letter telling the kid to stay put. He’d woken up scared and free and alone and finished his only weapon: the acid. Which, admittedly, had worked like a charm. A painful charm to be sure, but a charm nonetheless. A quick glance at his inner wrists revealed a nauseating patch of something burnt and bubbled the size of a silver dollar. They stung lightly now, but Tony had more important things to worry about.

Like making sure they kept a low profile as long as possible. Which meant he couldn’t leave a compromised guard laying out in the hallway with a pillowcase full of stolen goods. He sneaked into the hallway only long enough to drag the guard and the pillowcase into the cell, leaving the hallway empty. He dumped the guard in the far corner of the cell, rigging up a sort of hog-tie with the guard’s own belt.

The guard dealt with, Tony carried the pillowcase and sat down next to Peter again. His brows were furrowed, twitching like he was having a nightmare. Tony reflexively tensed, ready for another frantic fever dream, but none came. He forehead smoothed, and Tony considered the pickle they were really in.

The 36-hour deadline was approaching. How fast, Tony couldn’t say without a watch. What he wouldn’t give for a watch. Not even a gauntlet watch. The cheap watch Happy had lent him at the gala would do just fine.

Time or no time, every minute they waited here, it grew more likely that someone would realize the guard or Peter were gone and raise the alarm. And they needed to be out of here before that happened.

Peter looked no closer to waking, but they didn’t have the luxury of waiting around for him to wake up naturally. Tony would make sure he had plenty of time to rest once they made it out. For now, with the clock ticking to their discovery, if the kid had an actual plan like it looked like he might, Tony needed to hear it so he could execute it.

Muttering a quick apology, Tony set his knuckles over the kid’s sternum, rubbing over the bone harshly to elicit a response. He knew from experience this was not a pleasant way to wake up, but it was usually pretty efficient.

Sure enough, the kid groaned and flopped a hand up to rest on Tony’s wrist.

“Kid, you awake?”

“No,” came the weak response, but his eyes cracked open and looked around hazily. He squinted at Tony, then sighed. “What element are we on? My head hurts too much to think straight.”

His voice was muffled by the mask, but Tony got the gist clearly enough.

“Let’s see,” Tony said slowly, trying to remember the last time they’d used the code. It had been during Peter’s fever dream, but would he remember it? “I tried to use Chlorine, but the last one you remember might be Aluminum. So Potassium’s next? I guess?”

Peter’s eyebrows furrowed. “Wait, didn’t Mark use Chlorine? I thought I remembered that. Last night maybe.”

He looked like he was trying to recall something that was on the tip of his tongue

“No, that was me trying to get through to you. You were just…pretty out of it.”

He still looked unsure, and Tony didn’t blame him. He’d been more than just pretty out of it.

“You can check if it makes you feel better, kid,” he said, leaning over a little so Peter could reach his face. He immediately reached a hand up, feeling beneath Tony’s ear, his face relaxing when he found nothing suspicious.

“Good,” he said, letting a hand fall back to his chest, “Not sure what I’d do if you were a fake right now anyway.”

“Luckily we don’t have to find out.”

Peter pulled the mask from his voice to speak this time, apparently unhappy with the masked results. He sounded like he’d been running a marathon. “You can check too if you want,” he offered awkwardly.

“Don’t have to,” Tony said casually. “No one pulls off dramatic rescues and nearly dying quite like you do. It’s quite distinctive.”

Peter rolled his eyes, then sniffed the air. “You’re burned,” he said, frowning. “Was it the acid?”

“Yep,” Tony said, smothering a comment about how spider’s weren’t blood hounds. He showed Peter one of the tender black patches on his wrist. “Worked like a charm.”

“Except for the part where it burned you.”

“Kid, trust me,” Tony said. “That is the absolute least of our worries right now.” He pushed the mask back into place on Peter’s face. He hadn’t repaired that tank for the kid to not use it because he was feeling chatty.

“Yeah, we need a plan,” he said around the mask.

“You know, I had a plan to get you out of here before you went all Dillinger on me. Mark was supposed to give you a letter with instructions. Spoiler alert, this was not the plan. You were supposed to stay put.”

“Oh, I read the letter,” Peter said, stubbornly pulling the mask aside again to speak. “I thought maybe it was a fake.” Labored breath that made Tony want to snap the mask back on. “Then I decided even if it was real, it was stupid.”

Why was he surprised? He shouldn’t be. It fit his M.O. perfectly. No way was Peter going to lay around while other people saved him if he still had the energy to walk around and mess with things.

“Beg pardon? I didn’t see you coming up with anything better,” Tony said. Then only thought, because you were on your death bed.

“It wasn’t going to work anyway,” Peter said, then put the mask back into place himself and took a breath. How could such a simple move be so relieving and so worrying at the same time?

“Yeah, it was going to work,” Tony said, desperate for some reason to have Peter see the sense in his plan. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel abandoned. “It was working. Mark was going to let me call the team to come and grab you.”

“Guess he forgot to mention he’d called in some biologists to try and grab me first.”

Tony’s brain blanked out, a shiver working its way up his spine the only indication that his nervous system hadn’t shorted out entirely. The biologists? Hadn’t Mark said they weren’t an option anymore? Something about not wanting to offer damaged merchandise. He must have been lying.

“That bastard,” Tony said, seeing clearly the major weakness in his plan. He’d started to trust Mark. Apparently all it took were a few medical supplies and a five-course meal for Tony to convince himself that an enemy could be trusted. Maybe he was a malleable as Mark had claimed. “I should never have trusted him.”

Peter shrugged from his place on the floor. “I don’t know, sometimes you can trust him. But what you shouldn’t have done was try and trade places with me in the first place. It was stupid. Don’t do that. You’re not Yinsen.”

“Oh my god, are you still on that?” Tony asked reflexively and loudly, regretting telling the kid about him. “This was completely different! I didn’t run out and get shot for you. It wasn’t a Hail Mary. It was a calculated risk, so don’t tell me it was stupid.” He took a half breath to calm himself a little, but didn’t let up. This kid had to understand. “You were dying. Maybe still are dying. And yeah, the deal I worked out may be blown to pieces now, but you’re only here in the first place because I set it up. So you’re welcome.”

Peter looked like he had a whole annoyed spiel prepared to respond with, but instead he just rolled his eyes, closed them, then muttered, “Still stupid.”

Tony rolled his eyes. The kid was clearly too tired to keep up his frustration for long. And too tired to come up with a critique better than “stupid,” but he was bound to hear more about it when this was all over. “Critique my methods later, wisecrack. For now, let’s just focus on getting out of here.”

Peter’s eyes popped open again as he said, “Virginia.”

“Come again?”

“That’s where ‘here’ is. Virginia. Alleghany County, Facility 713.”

Apparently the kid’d had time for some intel before taking on the guard.

“Okay, I can work with Virginia,” Tony said, thinking. That meant if they got out and had to run for help, language wouldn’t be a barrier. It also meant that if they could get a call out, help wouldn’t be more than an hour away.

“It’s better than Jersey at least. Didn’t you say that’s where we were?”

Tony smirked. “Kid, anywhere is better than Jersey. Now fill me in. What’s your plan.”

“Find you. Break you out. Steal a helicopter.”

“Short and to the point,” Tony said, nodding. “I like it. So where’s the helicopter. And what’s with the Santa sack?” He gestured to the pillowcase next to him, and Peter craned his head up as if seeing it for the first time.

“Oh, that. I raided Mark’s office on my way here.”

Kid had been busy. He pushed himself to one elbow and reached for the bag, or rather he tried to. He made it only a few inches into a crunch before gasping and falling back. Tony threw out a hand to stop him from hitting his head again. Peter’s hands were both hovering cautiously over his side, where Tony knew a ragged wound still hid.

“Easy there, Ace,” Tony said, suddenly remembering something that could help. He pulled out the last syringe from his pocket, still loaded up with painkillers. Finally, some way to be immediately useful. “This is everything I’ve got left,” he explained. “I tried to attack Mark with the last one, and it kind of worked, so we can save some in case we have to try that trick again, but we’re using half for you now—and don’t you dare argue with me,” he added hastily when he saw Petr’s mouth start to open under the oxygen mask. “This is non-negotiable since you’re wincing every time you breathe.”

Peter just shifted his arm closer to Tony, indicating he was up for a shot.

Tony rolled up Peter sleeve and shot the right dose into his shoulder, tucking the half-full syringe back into his pocket when he was done. Peter still looked like breathing pained him, which was unsurprising given, well, everything. While they waited for the painkillers to kick in, Tony grabbed the pillowcase and opened it.

Immediately four or five little fly bots flew out the opening.

“What the hell?” Tony said, swatting at them, but they didn’t attack, seeming perfectly content to buzz around the room.

“Oh,” Peter said, sounding only a little surprised. “That’s what broke.” A raised eyebrows was all it took to make him continue. The guard threw me onto the pillowcase and something broke. It must have been the glass bottle those were in.”

Tony sighed, and started digging around inside the bag again, being careful of the sharp glass. He found rags, folders with papers spilling everywhere, some piles of stiff fabric, and was that a hard drive?

“Flies aside, you made out like a bandit,” Tony said. “A bandit with really weird taste. What is all this?”

“Don’t rifle around so much, it might explode.”

Tony froze, unsure if Peter was joking or not. He looked at him for a clue, but Peter was rolling to his side to push himself up again.

“Here, help me up, and I’ll show you.”

Tony dropped the bag to help him sit up, helping him over to a wall he could lean back against when regular sitting made him sway. He looked better sitting up. Less like he was dying.

“I hope you were joking about something exploding,” Tony said, handing the pillowcase to Peter.

The kid just reached in and pulled out a rag, unfolding it to reveal another pair of bottles, which he gingerly handed to Tony. But these weren’t labeled as an acid. Instead…

“Excuse me, does this say Grenade?” Tony asked, spinning the label so Peter could read it, as if he didn’t already know. As if he hadn’t scrawled the too small, too short, definitely not enough warning labels for the situation label himself. Only Peter. Only a reckless, well-intentioned, desperate idiot like him would be carrying around a set of homemade explosives in glass bottles in a pillowcase.

“Yes, it does,” Peter asked defensively. “But I labeled them just like in the labs back home. It was the best I could do.”

“This is not a big enough label, and it’s missing a few key details. What’s in here? What’s the time to detonation? What’s the blast radius?”

“Ummm, big?”

That was definitely a question, and not the statement it should have been. He raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Peter said, clearly sensing the judgment. “I couldn’t exactly test them without drawing too much attention, and I had to find you first.”

“So you’ve been carrying around untested explosives in glass bottles with rubber bands in a sack?”

“My options were limited. A few drops will make a pretty big spark, so the whole bottle? I don’t know, maybe a blast radius of fifty feet?”

“That’s huge.” And potentially useful, but definitely way more dangerous than the average grenade. “We’ll hit what we’re aiming at, but we’re liable to blow out a wall. Or a helicopter if Mark’s standing in the wrong spot.”

“They’re not for Mark,” Peter said. “We can’t just kill him. It’s not right.”

“Not kill him-then why the hell did you make giant grenades?”

“I don’t know!” Peter said, pulling the mask down around his neck. “It was all I could think of. Maybe we’d need to blow up a door or a wall to get out of here. Maybe we’d need to cause a distraction. Maybe I just wanted to blow up that stupid lab we were in so no one else would get stuck in there!”

All fair points. And all fairly Spider-Man uses. Removal of obstacles, escape, distraction, everything but killing. Which was the first thing Tony’s mind had jumped to. 

_You can_ _’t change the sting of the scorpion. It’s in its nature._

Tony shook Mark’s proclamation from his head. “Fine,” he said to Peter, wrapping them back up in the rag and counting how many he had. “We’ll hold these in reserve.” It was only fair that since the kid had invented them, he got the final say in what to do with them. “You know, since the helicopters are probably be guarded or at least loaded right now, we could just make a break for an exit. Blow a hole in an outer and wall and then just make a run for it.”

“No explosives needed,” Peter said. “All the doors are unlocked and propped open. It’s super creepy.”

“You’re welcome. That was part of the deal too,” Tony said. “To make it easier for people to get in to find you.”

Peter glared at him, apparently still bitter about Tony’s plan. Whatever. They could deal with that later.

“So why isn’t running out the door the plan then?” Tony pressed.

“We’re somewhere in the mountains. I couldn’t see anything for miles, and it’s freezing cold out there. Fighting out is the only option.”

“Don’t know if you noticed, Rambo, but you are in no condition to be front-line fighting anything right now.”

“Well I’m in less condition to try my hand at wilderness survival in freezing temperatures with…whatever the hell is wrong with me.”

“Pneumonia,” Tony supplied automatically.

“Pneumonia. Great.”

Peter slid the mask back onto his face as Tony thought. The kid was probably right. It was a helicopter or nothing. Unless they could grab a cell phone and call in the team. But they shouldn’t count on that. What was the best way to get a helicopter, possibly fight past some guards, while keeping the kid out of harm’s way?

As if he could read minds, Peter interrupted his planning.

“If you’re planning to go fight while I hide in a supply closet or something, I promise I’m going to mess up your plans again.”

Of course he was. It wasn’t like he was ready to keel over and had just fainted. No, Spider-Man was ready to take on an army.

“You passed out beating up one guard.”

Maybe the blunt reality of the situation would get through to the kid.

“You’re welcome.”

Then again, maybe it wouldn’t.

“Kid, here’s the facts,” Tony said. He was going to get this through to the kid if it was the last thing he did. “If Mark sees your face, you’re dead. If he sees my face, I’m captured, not dead. He’s already tried to kill you once, and I’d rather not give him another try.”

“Technically the rib thing was an accident,” Peter said, like this was a court case where technicalities actually mattered.

“Not the rib thing,” Tony clarified. “He tried to kill you while you were passed out with a fever, before we made our deal. I fought him off.”

“Oh,” Peter said, looking properly sobered. “Uh, thanks.”

“You’re welcome, but let’s not do it again if we can avoid it. That’s why whatever plan we come up with, I’m headlining.”

“Being useless sucks.”

“Better than being dead.”

Peter frowned. “Not funny.”

“Nope, just a fact,” Tony agreed. He felt the need to explain to the kid how much Mark respected, no, feared him determination and pursuit of justice. That Peter was being targeted as a revered enemy and not merely snuffed out as an annoying loose end or sacrifice like a useless game piece. But what did it matter why Mark wanted him dead?

_In the lab, the boy__’s a distraction. Out there, he’s a threat. Dead, he’s neither_.

Peter’s speaking slowly brought him back to the present.

“He’ll kill me if he sees my face, but what if he never actually sees _my face_?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Tony said, wondering if he was missing something. “I’m running the show even if it mean you hiding in a broom closet.”

“No, no.” Peter started rifling through the pillowcase, pulling out two pieces of the stiff fabric Tony had felt before and tossing one over to him. Tony unfolded his, noting a thicker patch on a corner with a thin screen on it. Could it be—

“They’re face cloaks,” Peter confirmed. “From Mark’s office. We can use these to disguise ourselves by impersonating guards or Mark or something.”

Tony flipped a minuscule switch, the tiny screen flickering to life.

“I’ve always wanted to get my hands on one of these,” he muttered as he thumbed through the minimalist options, watching the fabric shift colors and patterns in his hand as he did.

“Always?” Peter said, and Tony looked up to find an amused smirk.

“Always ever since I knew they existed,” he said. “Let’s see how they work. Looks like we’ve got four options”

His slid it on his face, where it clung with a slight tingle.

“That’s one of the EMTs,” Peter said.

Tony thumbed the switch.

“The other EMT.”

Two down, and neither of the options were looking super helpful.

“That one’s Mr. Munts,” Peter said frowning, and Tony quickly flipped to the last option.

“It’s you,” Peter said, cocking his head to get a different angle. “Wow, that’s weird. If if didn’t look like you’d suddenly shaved, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“Well, of those four options, my face is the only one that’s supposed to be around here. One of the other three would just cast suspicion.”

“Yeah, but you’re supposed to be in a cell, not wandering around the hallways.”

“So if someone sees you wearing one, they’ll just throw you in a cell, not peg you as an impostor and kill you on the spot.”

“Good point.” Peter unfolded the fabric in his hand and pulled the mask down to slide the cloak onto his own face.

Watching the kid’s face morph into Tony’s was an otherworldly experience. And then he was sitting across from himself, watching his own labored breathing and slightly pained expressions. God, this felt like a dream.

“Can you still use the oxygen over the mask?” Tony asked, and Peter thankfully pulled the mask back up, covering the goatee Tony was used to only seeing in the mirror and in newspapers.

“Yeah, I can still feel the oxygen,” Peter said, except it was in Tony Stark’s own confident voice. Apparently the voice modulators were programmed to activate when the faces did. Good. Weird and creepy and Tony hated it, but good.

“Good. Keep the disguise on then. Even if we’re together, it’ll at least confuse people and buy us some time.” It was worth Tony developing a complex from working with and protecting a slightly smaller version of himself if it kept the kid safe.

_Whatever happens to him is out of your hands_.

How had Mark gotten so far under his skin?

Peter grabbed the hard drive from the pillowcase, holding up the shiny black surface in front of him like it was a compact mirror.

“This is wild,” Peter said. “This might actually work.” He jutted out his chin, scrunching up his face into a noble-ish expression and announcing in a comic attempt at a deep voice “We are Iron Man!”

“I do not sound like that. There’s a voice modulator, so you don’t have to change your voice anymore,” Tony said, but he couldn’t help but laugh quietly. It was funny and slightly endearing, but mostly it pointed out the biggest flaw in this backup plan. A visual disguise wouldn’t be enough. Not if they ran into Mark. The kid couldn’t just look like Tony. He had to act like him. Talk like him. And do it convincingly. At least for a little while.

The kid needed Tony Stark lessons.

Which was the last thing he wanted to be teaching the kid. He was good in all the ways Tony was bad, gentle and curious in all the ways Tony was harsh and sarcastic.

_A bleeding heart like him should have nothing to do with you. _

For once, Tony agreed with Mark’s sentiments. But the only other option was to let the kid make an incredibly preventable gaffe and get himself outed as a fraud and probably killed. Unacceptable. So awkward self-introspection and revelations it was.

“Don’t go around declaring you’re Iron Man. That’s a dead giveaway for a teenager living out a superhero fantasy.”

“I don’t have a superhero fantasy,” Peter responded in Tony’s voice. “I’m already a superhero.”

Tony just rolled his eyes.

“All I’m saying is you might still give yourself away even if you’re wearing my face. You’ve got to play the part. You’ve got to _be me_.”

Then drop the act and never pick it up again.

“You’re one of a kind, Mr. Stark. There’ll never be another you.”

Thank god. Although did the kid try to be sappy or did it just slip out naturally?

“Damn right,” he said. “Except for today.”

“Okay, I can do that. Be Mr. Stark. Easy.”

“Sure you can, kid,” Tony said. “Just think like me. You’re rick, you’re super tech-savvy, you don’t have time for much of anyone or anything else.” Geez, that sounded bad. Peter’s Tony face darkened appropriately. “Sorry, that’s not what I meant. It’s just a facade. I don’t really think that. I mean, I am a very busy genius—” Okay, this was getting too deep. A deep breath cut off his rambling. “Look, this isn’t a psychotherapy session, so here’s the spark notes.” He counted out the main points on his fingers. “First, cut it out with the ‘Mr. Stark’ name because that’s a dead giveaway. Second, if you have to talk about yourself while pretending to be me, say ‘the kid.’ Third, under no circumstances let anyone see your messed up side or the chain because that’s a worse-than-dead giveaway. And maybe try not to cough or otherwise act like you have pneumonia if you can help it. Aside from that just…” Tony waved his hand nebulously, “fake it ‘til you make it.”

Peter looked unsure, which wasn’t going to fly with everything that was at stake.

“Any question, or do you get it?” Tony pressed.

“Yeah,” Peter responded with a scowl. “Act rich, smart, and disappointed in everyone else.”

Ouch. That seemed a little cynical to be coming from the kid, but he wasn’t really wrong.

“I mean, that’s one way to put it.”

“That’s how Mark puts it.”

Ah. That explained the cynicism.

“Just because he’s not far off about that doesn’t mean he’s right about anything else. Honestly, just be confident and almost anything can fly. I go from grandiose to self-deprecating in a split second. It keeps people on their toes.” Yeah, that was why he did that. Not because of deep-set insecurities and personal flaws.

“You’re kind of complicated, Mr. Stark.”

“Most people are, kid.”

Peter had nothing to say to that, and Tony was way past ready for this conversation to be over, so he turned back to the pillowcase.

“Got anything else in this Mary Poppins bag we can use?”

“There’s some of those fly bots that poisoned us, but I don’t know how we program them,” Peter said, producing a bottle with five or six little robots zooming around inside. “Oh, and Spider-Bot’s in there, but same problem. I don’t know how we’d program him.”

“They can tag along as souvenirs then.”

“I also grabbed a bunch of files from Mark’s office and stole his hard drive, so we’ve got to make sure we bring those things with us. It’ll help us nail him once we’re home. We’ve got to get this guy. It’s way deeper than we thought.”

He handed Tony a stack of folders while the memory of Mark’s words drowned out Peter’s rambling.

_He_ _’s far too principled to be allowed to live after he turned me down._

This was what Mark had meant, had feared, had predicted. The kid wasn’t even out yet, and he was already planning ways to get back in and dismantle the whole system. Sometimes, Mark seemed to know the kid frighteningly well.

He tuned back in to the kid’s rambling.

“—names of everyone he kidnapped. He’s been doing it for at least ten years. It’s super messed up.”

“He’s not the only one, kid,” Tony said, sadly not surprised at the revelation. “There’s a whole Guild of Masters just like him.”

Peter, however, looked horrified. “And they’ve probably each got their own pile of files,” he whispered. “How many people is that?”

“There’s no way to know kid, but we’ll find out once _we__’re _out.”

Peter still looked unsure, an expression Tony did not like seeing on his own face.

“You know what confuses me the most?” Peter said. “The guard, Ramirez, he used to be in a Crucible himself. And now he’s joined up with them or whatever and keeps other people in. How does that make any sense?”

It didn’t, but they couldn’t lose time over it now. But if this came up later and Peter had to pretend to be Tony, he may as well know what Tony did.

“Mark’s the same way. Said that all the Masters come from the Crucibles. He was in one and got his collarbone all messed up there. He showed me the scars. Might have even been bone shackles like yours.”

“That must have been awful.”

Well, the kid would know. Although how he could waste any sympathy on Mark right now was completely beyond Tony.

“Don’t start feeling bad for him now.”

“I don’t. I mean, I do, but he’s still a terrible person. It doesn’t make it right. But it just doesn’t make sense.”

Peter’s puzzled frown only grew deeper as he thought, and Tony had to look away to avoid mimicking the expression. He felt like the reflection in the mirror. It seemed so wrong to have two faces, facing each other, shaped differently.

Instead he looked at the files, flipping through them and feeling a pang with each name. It was different having heard about it and being faced with a list of names and inventions.

A folder near the end stopped him in his tracks.

“Kid, did you know you’ve got Mark’s file here?”

“What?” Peter said, leaning too far to the side to see and almost falling over.

Tony helped him upright once more then sat against the wall next to him so they could both read it.

The inside of the file folder had the word ABANDONED written across it in large black marker, but it was crossed out. An ever larger RECRUITED was written underneath it.

The first actual page in the folder was a memo. A memo not unlike the one that had been dropped on Tony’s porch weeks ago. The similarities made him shudder.

_To: The Poison Master, _

_Your gross incompetence in acquiring the wrong target has potentially tipped the Guild_ _’s hand and shows a lack of focus and attention to detail unbefitting of the Guild of Masters. Carpaccio must be dealt with accordingly. The original target, Williams, is being handed off to a different Master. _

_An error of this magnitude will not go unnoticed, and you may consider this your second official warning. Your third will be your last._

_Sincerely,_

_The Guild of Masters_

They were way less polite in their internal memos. A second memo was attached to it with a paper clip

_To: The Guild of Masters,_

_Your earlier objections were noted, but let it be known that as of Thursday, Carpaccio provided intelligence and personal involvement, secured acquisition of the original intended target, Williams. Given his efforts, he is being advanced to the Recruitment track after he heals from his injuries. _

_The Poison Master_

“That’s like me,” Peter said quietly.

_I know him because I _was _him_.

“He’s nothing like you, kid,” Tony said firmly, arguing against both voices. Would people stop suggesting that already?

“I wasn’t an original target,” Peter pointed out. “Neither was he.”

“Maybe, but you didn’t turn anyone else in to save yourself.”

“Yeah, but you’re here anyway. Two for the price of one. Maybe Mark got a memo like this about me and had to get you to make up for his mistake. It’s the same.”

The kid was working himself up. Tony snapped the folder shut, wishing he’d never opened it.

“What do you keep telling me?” He said, turning to face the kid, immediately regretting it when he was faced with his own mask-covered visage. It was like a specter from the future or something. From a different life. But Tony held his gaze to make his point. “You keep telling me that this isn’t Afghanistan, no matter what Mark thinks. Well, it’s not Mark’s Crucible either. History isn’t repeating itself, no matter whose history it is.”

“It is though. It had been from the start. Don’t you see, this is all he does: he copies things he sees. He tried to remake Spider-Bot. He’s got dozens of other scientists’ inventions in his desk to study. He tried to make this Afghanistan for you. He copied the bone shackles that happened to him with me. He’s trying to make this his Crucible all over again!”

Peter dropped his head into one hand, using the other to press the oxygen mask tighter onto his face. Tony dropped a hand to his back, feeling the kid’s heaving in and out, his breathing sped up by fear.

_I know his fear from the Crucible. He_ _’ll deny it and it will cripple him._

Not if Tony had anything to say about it.

Which he might not. Some days he wasn’t even sure he’d gotten over his own fear from Afghanistan. Most nights actually. The fear from something like this didn’t just blow away with the wind. Tony’s fear was still there in his refusal to swim, in the pang in his chest, in his flinch whenever he heard someone speaking the language they’d used. Where would Peter’s fear hide in his future?

Only time would tell, but maybe Tony could do something about his fear now.

“Damn what Mark wants,” he said, leaning in close enough that Peter had no choice but to look him in th face. “He’s not going to get it because_ you__’re not him_. You’re not him, even though you were in his Crucible, and you’re not me, even though you’re wearing my face. You’re not anybody else or their story. You’re Peter Parker. You’re Spider-Man, and your the piece in everyone’s stories right now that is going to stop history from repeating itself. You’re different. That’s why things are going to be different from the past.”

“What happened to his friend?” Peter said suddenly, pushing Tony aside and grabbing the rest of the files out of the pillowcase. “Come on, come on,” he muttered as he shuffled through files. He threw them back in the bag and fell back against the wall, defeated. “We don’t have a file for Williams.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got a name, so we’ll look it up once we get out of this hellhole.”

“No, I need to know what happened to him. What ending is Mark trying to copy?”

“You’re working yourself over something we don’t know. Yes, there are some bizarre similarities between your stories right now, but it doesn’t matter how his ended. You know how you want yours to go, so focus on making that happen.”

“You’re right,” Peter said, appearing a little calmer, “but I still don’t understand him.”

“That’s because he’s a psycho.”

“No. I mean, yeah, of course, but he always makes sense. Twisted sense. But how could he go from…you know…to being a master? Ramirez was just a guard. Maybe they’ve got something on him that forced him to switch sides. Maybe he doesn’t want to do it but feels like he has to. But Mark? He’s in charge. He wants to do it, and I don’t get it.”

“Kid, sometimes there’s nothing to get. Sometimes it’s just a screwed up cycle of abuse that people propagate because they don’t know what else to do. This is just an extreme version.”

“But Mark would know what to do. He gets things. It just doesn’t fit,” he trailed off thoughtfully.

Peter trying to plumb the psychotic depths of Mark’s psyche was not going to get them out of here. He’d had the uncanny ability to understand Mark’s specific brand of madness and methods before, but that didn’t mean he’d understand everything. He had to let this one go.

_I know him because I was him. If he lives, he_ _’ll never forget it, just as I never have._

If Mark really was trying to make history repeat itself, Tony wasn’t going to let him. Not another Afghanistan. Not another Crucible. Not another Yinsen. Not another victim of the Crucible who let his role in the system warp the rest of his life.

Maybe Mark had been like Peter once. In the Crucible maybe he’d had some of the same drive or commitment or whatever it was that let them understand each other. But whatever may have been similar in Mark then was now twisted so far out of shape as to be nearly unrecognizable.

Mark still claimed to see it. Maybe Peter actually saw some of it, if how well he seemed to understand Mark was anything to go by. Or his insistence that Mark be allowed to live, which still grated at Tony’s nerves.

Well, whatever had twisted in Mark in the Crucible wasn’t going to twist in Peter. Tony wouldn’t let it.

“It’s only a matter of time before Mark comes in here and finds us both on the floor or me missing,” Tony said, redirecting Peter and himself to more useful thought processes. Ones that might actually help them escape. “And I’d strongly prefer the latter. We need a plan.”

“The helicopter bay is on this floor,” Peter said.” Mark was a few floors down a while ago, so we might be able to steal one and make a getaway right now.”

The kid hauled himself to his feet with a pained caution that worried Tony, who stood to join him. And catch him if he collapsed again.

“Maybe I should sneak out and check while you wait here,” Tony said as Peter braced against the wall for support.

“What? No. I’ll come. Spider-Man can be sneaky.”

“Spider-Man’s lugging around an oxygen tank like an octogenarian.”

“I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

“Fine, wonder boy,” Tony said with a huff, although he was likely equally loathe to be separated. “If there’s an opening, we’ll take it then.”

They left the room, wandering down the hallway in near silence. Peter pointed the directions to go, but Tony kept himself in front, one hand clutching the pillowcase, the other wrapped nervously around the syringe in his pocket.

When they reached an open corner with a breeze, Tony knew they were close. He signaled to Peter to stay back. The kid frowned, but seemed willing to stay put. Probably not for long though.

Tony sneaked into a pair of propped open double doors, hiding behind a stack of boxes close to it.

The bay took up a massive portion of the building. Part of the roof was retractable, and at least half of it was pulled back as the guards worked.

Two helicopters, at least one guard on each chopper at all times. At least two guns, which likely meant all the guards had one.

One of the guards pointed toward the boxes Tony was hiding behind and he cursed, scampering back as fast as he could. He didn’t think he’d been seen; they didn’t appear to be moving urgently. Nonetheless, he turned the corner back the way he’d come, silently waving Peter back the way they’d come.

The kid got the memo, or was getting his own memo from his spider senses, and immediately took off, hopefully leading them somewhere useful.

They ended up back in a dark, half-empty supply closet.

“Not back to the cell?” Tony asked as Peter flipped the dim light and starting searching through boxes stacked on shelves all around them. “What are you looking for?”

“Seeing you sneaking ahead made me realize, wearing the same clothes we have been is a dead giveaway.” He pulled a box off a high shelf, wincing at something and letting the box drop, then wincing again at the sound.

Tony moved over to help him search. “So you’re looking for uniforms or something?”

“There were some supply closets on the bottom floors that still had some lab coats in them. I guess they were in a rush to pack up and decided not to take everything. I don’t know if they’re even been through this one yet. Aha!”

Peter pulled out a jumpsuit like the one Tony was wearing. He immediately pulled it on over his jeans and t-shirt, and the transformation was complete.

“Not bad, kid.”

“Thanks,” Peter said, sitting on a box to catch his breath. “Now what did you see in there?”

“Two helicopters and at least four guards,” Tony reported. “Busier than bees and I think they all had guns, so I doubt we can slip in without being seen as is.”

“Was Mark there?”

Tony shook his head. “Didn’t see him.”

“Good.”

“Okay, what’s the plan, what’s the plan,” Tony muttered to himself. What would get Peter home in one piece the fastest? What was the surest bet?

Peter next to him was still as fidgety as he’d been in the hallway, constantly looking around the room, checking over his shoulder every ten seconds like he though he’d sprouted a pair of wings.

“Everything alright, kid?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah.”

“Because you look like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. You sensing something?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe. My senses have been a little off. Or a little on, I guess. They’re always buzzing now.”

“Makes sense.” And hopefully was an accurate assessment. The last thing they needed was to ignore the kid’s internal alarm system.

“The lab we were in has a computer,” Peter volunteered suddenly. “We could use it to reprogram Spider-Bot as a weapon or a distraction.”

“No,” Tony said reflexively. “I’m not going back there.” Wow, was that logic or trauma speaking?

Peter looked like he’d already decided the answer. “We can burn the hinges off the door,” he said reassuringly. “We’re not going to get locked in again.”

“It’s not that,” Tony said, still only half-sure but getting more sure the more he thought. He could do so a lot with a computer, but it hadn’t saved them before and wouldn’t save them now. “It would be too much risk,” he said. “Too far to travel. Too much time.” Tony’s head was spinning with ideas, with calculations, with predictions.

They had plenty of assets: face cloaks, fly bots if they could catch them, Spider-Bot, grenades, maybe whatever was left in the lab, a conscious kid who could at least walk around, half a syringe of super-powered painkillers.

But they had plenty of liabilities: at least four guards in the bay with guns, what amounted to kill-on-sight orders for the kid, a kid who was still breathing heavily, wincing, and looking around with a look of frantic desperation. With Tony’s face. Man, he was never going to get used to that.

Plenty of assets, too many liabilities, and not enough time. Never enough time. The plan would have to be short and simple. Peter had gotten them this far; Tony could take them the rest of the way.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Tony said, rubbing his hands together. “We’re going to plant a few grenades as a diversion big enough to clear out the hangar bay. Then we’ll steal a chopper and head for the hills.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep. Unless you can come up with something better in the next ten seconds.”

“Maybe if I had ten minutes.”

“Look, kid. The clock is counting down on Mark discovering that we’re gone. The biggest asset we have right now is the element of surprise. And our matching faces. We need to capitalize on those.”

“Okay. Let’s do it,” Peter said with determination. “There’s an elevator shaft near the bay that would cause massive problems for the move and people getting up to this floor if it were blown up. And we could take out the other stairwell to limit access to this floor completely. Maybe we’ll trap Mark down below.”

“Brilliant,” Tony said, fishing out two grenades each for them from the pillowcase. “You take the stairwell, and I’ll take the elevator. Meet me back just outside the hangar bay in that little nook, and don’t get caught.”

“Duh,” Peter said, grabbing the handle to the oxygen tank.

“Wait,” Tony said, a worst-case scenario morbidly occurring to him. “Do you know how to pilot a helicopter?”

“Uhh, I’ve done it in a video game before.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to fly,” Tony said. “Here’s a crash course, just in case you need it.”

“I’m not taking a helicopter without you on it, so you can just fly it.”

“Never say never, kid. What if I’m busy dealing with something else and you need to fly us both out of there?”

“Fine,” Peter said after a few seconds of thinking, “but if I crash the helicopter because I don’t even have a drivers license yet, you can’t say a thing about it. Ever.”

“Deal.”

Peter paid close attention for Tony’s whole three-minute spiel, but when he turned toward the door after Tony finished, he grabbed him by the shoulder before he was even sure what he was going to say. It definitely wasn’t about helicopters. Peter looked at him quizzically.

“I know we’re in a rush, but one more thing…Look, whatever winging it we have to do after blowing stuff up…” How should he say this?”

Peter said it for him.

“You’re going to say that I should stay back.”

“Yeah, exactly. You stay the hell back and let me handle things.”

Peter raised his chin defiantly. “No. If I see an opportunity to step in, I’m taking it.”

Of course you are, Tony thought bitterly. How could he get the kid to see exactly how precarious his situation was?

“I know I can’t make you keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong,” Tony said quietly, “but whatever you do, think seriously beforehand and make sure you’re not going to make things worse.”

“I don’t make things worse!”

“Not normally you don’t, no,” Tony granted, “but you’re not normal today. You’re on oxygen. You’re missing bones. You’ve got pneumonia. You fainted taking out one guard. Spider-Man can’t pull off any of his usual stunts and get away with them today. Be careful. Be smart. Don’t make things worse.”

It was what Peter had said to him, and he studied Peter’s face disguised as his own face to see if it had landed. God, was this what Pepper and Rhodey felt like, trying to give Tony advice and seeing if it stuck. He hoped he had a better poker face than the kid did.

“I’ll be careful,” Peter finally said, “but I’m not hanging back. If I see the chance first, I’m taking it.”

As Peter moved to the door and his hand slid from his shoulder, Mark’s words echoed back to him, yet again.

_Death touches everything that you do. _

It was Tony’s worst fear. That death had shadowed him in life, had been his guardian, his teacher, his benefactor, his most reliable friend and his worst enemy. It had reached its fingers far and wide in the swathes of Tony’s life, had come for Yinsen, had taken Rhodey’s legs, had grazed Pepper and Happy, had maybe secured a grip around Peter.

The kid hung back at the door before opening it long enough to turn back and say, “Different story, right?”

Tony forced a smile to hide his fear.

“Mark won’t even know what hit him.”

Peter half-opened his mouth, like that wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for and didn’t know what to say about it, but then he snapped it shut, clearly preparing for the tasks ahead.

It was strange seeing Tony’s own face acquire Spider-Man’s focus, watch the body attached to it crouch a little lower like it thought it could physically handle whatever it came up against without a lick of technology.

Then he slipped out the door and the real Tony was left behind to catch his breath for a few seconds. And mutter a quick, “Please let this work,” before sneaking out the door himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is the big one. The apogee. The zenith. The climax. The pinnacle. The summit.  
And a villain POV. Because Mark definitely has something to say about the plan our heroes have cooked up.
> 
> If you're so inclined, come hang out on Tumblr with me. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	32. "Don't Move"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That boy. He was involved too. Somehow he’d sprung Stark from the cell, ruining Mark’s plans yet again.
> 
> But he wasn’t going to walk away from it this time. Mark was going to ruin him.
> 
> The rules of the Crucible had prevented him from killing the boy previously—that and Stark’s protective instincts and that damn needle in the one moment Mark had truly lost his temper and nearly broken a rule—but the rules of the Crucible no longer applied. The boy had been freed. All bets were off now. His life was forfeit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gents, this is the moment you’ve waited for  
Been searching in the dark, you fear soaking through the floor  
And buried in his bones there’s an ache that he can’t ignore  
Taking his breath, stealing his mind  
And all that was real is left behind…

Mark leaned against the wall of the ancient freight elevator as it shakily rose to the fifth floor. He shrugged his shoulders, sore from packing and moving so many boxes. It wasn’t usual work for a Master, but desperate times and all that.

His third team had left yesterday after clearing level two—the Face Master had made a request for more manpower that Mark couldn’t have refused. Now, with four hours left until the deadline and only three other employees to finish packing up a storage room on the fourth floor and Mark’s own office, things were coming down to the wire. And since Mark wanted to pack his office himself, he couldn’t put that off any longer.

So much to do, and so little time. But once he got Stark to the new Crucible, it would all be worth it. He’d have to take care to plan every detail. This first Crucible had been a special kind of perfect, but the boy being here had tainted the place. A replica would be a distraction in and of itself.

Or would it? Perhaps being constantly reminded of the boy would somehow weaken Stark’s moral? If that were the case, he’d replicate every last thing down to the burn mark on the floor. Mark sighed as the elevator shuddered past another floor, the dim number on the panel changing to a four.

He’d have to give everything some serious thought tonight. Mark was good at predicting people, but he’d have to be careful with this one. He was on thin ice requesting a second Crucible as it was. If he didn’t get quick results? Well, nothing good would come from the other Masters.

One thing he knew was that he was done with the boy. He’d done nothing but meddle with perfectly good plans. Even if the Biologists finished with him and wanted to sell him back, Mark wouldn’t buy. That boy was more trouble than he was worth. He’d find some other way to mold Stark.

His massive guilt complex was a promising target. Mark had bragged to the boy on his first day here about how Stark was personally, villainously responsible for the horrors his weapons had caused. He’d hoped it would turn the boy against him, or at least make him doubt his hero’s heroism—which hadn’t worked—but Stark actually seemed to subscribe to a similar mentality. That, combined with his ridiculously rigid morals, was a definite weak spot.

Or he could always figure out more about this Yinsen character. Stark had spoken of him fondly, tragically. Mark didn’t know the details—a few Internet searches had turned up nothing—but he could guess. It sounded like the man had played a part in reforging Stark in Afghanistan. Maybe he could use that somehow to reforge him again.

The elevator finally screeched to a half on the fifth floor, the doors creaking open with all the speed of a turtle yawning. Mark headed for his office, already dreading the stack of flat boxes in the corner waiting to be boxed up and filled. So much to do. So little time.

But when he walked into his office, the boxes were the last thing on his mind.

Someone else had been in here.

Things were disheveled, moved around. A chill hung in the air from a window that someone-definitely not Mark—had left open. Maybe a moving team had been in here gotten warm? But they shouldn’t have been in here in the first place.

His laptop lay untouched on his desk, but some of the drawers were open, and the robotic spider was missing. The bookshelves were still full.

Mark pulled out his radio. “Has anyone been in my office and started packing things up?”

There was a possibility some over-eager lackey had started moving things to the chopper already. Probably Mollery. That was something he would do.

“Negative from team one,” a crackly voice said from the radio. “You said you wanted to do it.”

“Nothing from team two either,” a second voice added. “We’ve been on the second floor all day.”

Stark then.

Somehow—Mark didn’t yet know how—this had something to do with Stark.

He pulled open desk drawers, finding his stack of files missing, as well as the gun that he stored underneath them.

“Dammit!” he yelled, pulled the drawer off its tracks and throwing it behind him angrily.

Somehow, Stark had managed to escape and was now hiding somewhere around the base, armed with a gun, more intel than Mark could afford to lose, and whatever other tech he’d managed to salvage in here. Mark thought back to the state the room had been in before, trying to picture everything Stark could have taken.

That spider robot for one. That was just adding insult to injury since there was no way Stark actually valued that piece of trash. Unless he was hoping to finish it and let it loose in the walls as some sort of chaotic distraction, per their original plan. Mark had been idly repairing it, so it was possible Stark could get it operational again, if he’s had it long enough. Damn.

There was also a bottle of fly bots missing and at least one face cloak. Double damn. Mark was going to hurt for losing that if he didn’t recover it. The Face Master didn’t like his merchandise getting out of Guild hands.

And Mark didn’t like his own merchandise escaping its cell and running rampant through the building. He’d put a stop to that. Reaching in the back of one the desk’s shallow drawers, Mark drew out a pair of handcuffs and left the ransacked office, heading straight for Stark’s cell. He wasn’t sure what he’d find, but he doubted he’d like it. Still, he had to make sure. Had to know exactly what he was dealing with. Had to figure out how Stark had managed to escaped while chained up in a guarded cell.

The door to the cell appeared closed, but when Mark reached for the key pad on the cell door, he realized there was no need. It was burned and warped nearly beyond recognition. What the hell?

The door swung open easily when Mark pushed it open.

The only person in the room was Ramirez, hogtied with his own belt in a corner of the room and barely starting to stir.

Mark clenched his teeth so tightly it hurt. He should have had someone more reliable guarding the cell. Should have have two someones. Hell, he should have just drugged Stark to the gills until he woke up in the new Crucible.

Apparently even chains weren’t enough to keep the man from luring a guard into the room and taking him out. What he’d give for that footage.

He moved over to examine the handcuffs that were hanging from the wall. The metal was warped and twisted, even a little swollen and burned in some areas, like it has been eaten away by an acid…

Son of a bitch.

That boy. He was involved too. Somehow he’d sprung Stark from the cell, ruining Mark’s plans yet again.

But he wasn’t going to walk away from it this time. Mark was going to ruin him.

The rules of the Crucible had prevented him from killing the boy previously—that and Stark’s protective instincts and that damn needle in the one moment Mark had truly lost his temper and nearly broken a rule—but the rules of the Crucible no longer applied. The boy had been freed. All bets were off now. His life was forfeit.

Mark crossed the room and nudged Ramirez roughly with his foot as he pulled out his radio again. If Stark was running around the base, people had to know. Maybe someone had seen something. Ramirez definitely had, if only he’d wake up and share.

“All teams, red alert,” Mark said into the radio as Ramirez groaned a little at his feet. “Both Stark and Spider-Man are loose in the building. Spider-Man can be shot on sight, but leave Stark unharmed. Anyone who sees anything unusual, report on the radios immediately. Stevens, check the entrance logs and tell me if anyone’s left the building yet.”

He knelt down to untie Ramirez as he waited for a response. Stevens’ hesitant voice came back on the radio immediately. “Sorry, boss. We dismantled the alarms when we opened all the doors this morning to prepare for the rescue teams, so there’s no way to tell. They could both already be gone and we’d never know.”

“Understood,” Mark said evenly into the radio, but he kicked Ramirez a little in anger. It wasn’t Stevens’ fault; he’d only been following orders.

But it meant that they could both be gone already, hiding somewhere deep in the forest. If that were the case, Mark would have a hell of a time finding them before they froze to death or died of starvation. They were at least fifteen miles of mountainous terrain from the nearest cabin.

Maybe Stark had realized as much though. A simple look out the window would have told him how isolated they were. And if he had the boy with him, he wouldn’t risk him to the elements, not in his condition. They were likely still in the building. And if that were the case, then their best bet at a timely escape was…

The helicopter hangar.

That _had _to be where they were headed. Wherever they were in the facility now, the chopper bay was the inevitable choke point where they’d end up.

“New priority,” Mark said over the radio. “All teams have five minutes to pack up anything that could be used as a weapon in their area and bring it to the chopper bay. Await further instructions there.”

He gave Ramirez a shove and the man finally cracked his eyes open. Mark didn’t bother waiting for him to stop squinting or wincing. So much to do. So little time.

“You’ve got fifteen seconds to tell me what the hell happened in here before I tie you back up myself.”

Ramirez’s eyes widened, and he started talking, the words spilling over each other. “Sorry, boss! He surprised me. Kid was in the hallway, escaped somehow. He attacked me. Broke my gun or I would have shot him. I thought I had him but then…guess not.” He trailed off in confusion.

“Yeah,” Mark spat. “Guess not.” If he’d had a gun, he’d be sorely tempted to put a bullet in Ramirez right now, stop him from screwing up some other Master’s plan. There was no way this side of hell he’d be working with Mark again. He had about ten minutes of use left in him.

“How did the boy seem?” Mark asked. “Give me details.” He had to know what he was dealing with. He hadn’t expected a day of basic medical attention to be such a shot in the arm, but it was possible he’s underestimated the kid’s super healing.

“He was in bad shape,” Ramirez. “Couldn’t breathe right. He had an oxygen tank with him, but he was fast. Got the jump on me. Man, I should have been able to take him.”

“Yes. You should have,” Mark said as he stood, “and we’ll talk about that later. For now, I need you to head down to floor two and check out he original Crucible. Grab a partner with a gun on the way down. It’s possible Stark and the boy went there to regroup. Shoot the kid on sight, and bring Stark up to the chopper bay if you find him.”

“Yes, sir,” Ramirez said, climbing quickly to his feet and practically running out the door.

Mark was close behind him, moving back to his office and the intercom unit there. He flipped the switch to broadcast to the whole building and voiced his demands. No use playing cards close to the chest now.

“Tony Stark.” His voice echoed from the hallway through the open door, but Mark ignored the reverb. “You have ten minutes to turn yourself in at the helicopter bay on the fifth floor for immediate extraction or the deal is off. The boy’s staying here no matter how this ends, and if you still want him to have a heartbeat and a rescue team coming when you leave, you’d better get there on time. Or you’re welcome to stay here with him and starve to death once you realize we’ve removed all methods of communication from the base. The choice is yours.” He let static fill the air for a few seconds before releasing the switches.

If Stark came quickly and quietly, Mark had every intention of leaving the deal intact and letting rescue come. He’d salvage whatever was left of this circus that he could.

Not that he expected Stark to take the deal. 70/30 odds in favor of Stark staging some sort of elaborate diversion. But still, any plan he made had to land him and the boy in the chopper bay eventually.

Mark left his office, heading straight for the chopper bay. He was still two hallways away when an explosion shook the building. Mark stumbled, grabbing a wall for support and managing to stay on his feet.

He listened to the rumble and groan of the building as things settled, trying to find new positions with walls and floors that were suddenly gone.

He pushed onward, wary of the fact that the explosion had come from that direction. He passed the hallway to the elevators, shocked to see a gaping hole where the freight elevator and North staircase had been. The forest beyond stood like a massive mural where it didn’t belong, the new chill in the air already noticeable. What the hell could have made an explosion that huge? Where had Stark gotten something powerful enough to cause structural damage?

“Teams, report!” Mark barked over the radio.

Silence.

Great. Ninety seconds later, he was at the entrance to the chopper bay when a second explosion sounded, much further away this time, coming from the opposite side of the building. The tremors shook the soles of his shoes, but it was a shiver of worry that worked its way from his heels all the way to the back of his neck.

Were they trying to bring down the entire building? They had to realize that collapsing the building would destroy their only method of escape, right? Although it might prevent anyone from reaching the fifth floor who wasn’t already on it. They’d already taken out the elevator and one set of stairs.

They may have isolated the floor, but they’d have to do better than that if they expected the explosions to be a true diversion. It would take more than a burning building to distract Mark from the true prize. His deal with Stark allowing a rescue team the coordinates for the base would have meant selling or razing the place anyway. Letting fire burn it to the ground would save him on demolition bills anyway. It might even get them some insurance money.

Hopefully the damp October weather would stop it from catching too much of the surrounding forest ablaze, but that was barely a concern at this point.

He walked into the chopper bay, glad to see two unharmed helicopters and a nervous guard—Schwartz—waiting by the closer of the two. Perfect.

Nothing was going to distract him, not the continuing thuds of building pieces settling, not the wisps of smoke working their way out of the air vents. And nothing would distract his two victims from the eventual realization that their only hope of a timely escape was a helicopter.

“Sorry, boss,” Schwartz said as Mark approached. “I lost my radio in the explosion or I would have called. Still got my gun though.”

Now that he mentioned it, he was looking a little singed.

“Did you see anything else?”

“Stevens and his partner are fine, but they’re trapped on the lower floors. The explosions took out the North set of stairs and the elevators. They were headed for the South stairs, but it sounds like those are gone too.”

“Most likely,” Mark said, looking around and planning. Both the stairs out meant that Stark and the boy were already on this floor. And Stevens was the only other person with them. The helicopter behind him looked pretty fully loaded.

“Alright, Schwartz,” Mark decided, “I need your gun. Then you’re going to take this helicopter to the new location. Facility 282. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes, but the chopper’s not fully loaded. There’s still stuff down on the lower floors. You won’t be able to fit it on the last chopper.”

“Forget that now. Let it all burn. I need you to take this chopper out so I only have one to guard. I’ll follow with everyone left behind once we take care of our guests.”

Schwartz nodded, handing over his gun and clambering onto the helicopter. It was airborne and out through the partially open roof within minutes.

And still no sign of the escapees.

Mark took up position behind a stack of boxes near the last helicopter, partially concealing himself. The cold air from above wafted down in a chilly draft, but Mark ignored it. A little cold never killed anybody. Unless they already had pneumonia of course.

So he waited stoically to see who would show themselves first.

He was betting on Stark. The boy was an incredibly liability at this point, and Stark had to know that Mark was willing to kill him. If Mark were in Stark’s shoes, he’d stash the boy somewhere safe and come back for him after dealing with Mark.

Mark couldn’t help but grin when Stark walked slowly into the room two minutes later, looking around suspiciously.

Mark stepped out from behind the stack of boxes, gun leveled at Stark.

“Come to turn yourself in? Good move.”

“I can tell when I’ve lost,” Stark said, indeed looking put out. He was breathing hard, like he’d run a distance. He must have stashed the boy far away from the chopper bay then.

“Good, I’ve had enough of your games.” Mark pulled the handcuffs out of his pocket, placed them on the ground, and kicked them over toward Stark. “Put those on before walking over. Then you’re going to join me for a helicopter ride.” Most likely while unconscious in the back seat. Mark wasn’t taking any more chances.

Stark took a few steps forward, maybe thirty feet away at this point, and grabbed the handcuffs. He fiddled with them, but didn’t put them on. “I still get to send my message before we leave, right?”

“You broke our deal first. Who says I’ve got to honor the rest of it?”

“Can’t fault a man for trying.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Mark said. “But maybe I’ll let you make the call. Where is the boy? I know he was with you. I saw the effects of his acid.”

Stark smirked, like he was recalling a fond memory. “Yeah, worked like a charm.” The smile faded. “But he ran off into the woods in another fever dream. If my team doesn’t come looking for him…”

They both knew what would happen. If Stark was actually telling the truth, which Mark still doubted.

“Why bother? He’ll probably freeze before they even get here.”

“He won’t,” Stark said quickly, gripping the handcuffs tighter. He started walking closer. Too close. The hairs on Mark’s neck raised.

The closer Stark got, the more Mark could hear exactly how hard he was breathing. Too hard.

A bolt of inspiration struck.

This might not be Stark.

“Don’t move,” Mark said firmly. “On your knees on the floor.”

When Stark took another hesitant step forward—twenty feet now—and Mark fired a warning shot at the floor.

Stark stopped and knelt down, slowly. Too slowly. Like he was in pain. He raised his hands in the air. “What’s wrong now?”

“You are,” Mark said, keeping the gun trained on Stark and slowly approaching. “You’ve been in my office, and there’s at least one face cloak missing. You might not be who your face is showing. Show me your ribs.”

Stark didn’t move.

At least, that Stark didn’t move. As Mark was speaking his last words, a second Tony Stark appeared in the entryway, walking carefully closer as he eyed the situation.

“Oh, I think the games are just beginning, Hephaestus,” said the Stark who was still at least forty feet back.

Mark couldn’t stop the goosebumps from raising on his arms as he flicked his eyes back from one Stark to the other.

One Stark appearing had felt like an opportunity.

Two Starks felt like a reckoning.

“Lost in the woods, was he?” Mark asked, and the closer Stark just smirked.

Far Stark took another step and Mark swung the gun to him. “Stop moving, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

“Not if I’m the real deal,” he said, but he stopped advancing.

Mark flipped the gun back to Close Stark, who was still on his knees, then back to Far Stark again, finally settling on Close Stark. Everything in him was telling him to shoot before one of them got too close, but he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t let the boy escape, but the Guild would never forgive him for killing Stark.

“So that’s the play then?” Mark asked. “You think pretending one of you is a ghost will spook me into an early grave?”

He was stalling, but he was quickly figuring out exactly what their game was. They looked the same. Identical. Damn the integrity of the Face Master’s cloaks. They were even wearing matching jumpsuits. The oxygen tank Ramirez had mentioned was nowhere in sight. From this distance and with how far apart they were standing, Mark couldn’t even tell which one was the slightly shorter boy.

“We’re not here to scare you,” Far Stark said. “We’re just here to help you realize you’ve already lost.”

“Most people wouldn’t bet against the only man in a stand-off that actually has a weapon.”

Neither of them was showing a weapon, both sets of hands easily visible and empty except for Close Stark holding the handcuffs. But their strategy was more subtle than a gun. Still not perfect though.

Mark couldn’t visually tell a difference, but theirs still wasn’t a perfect game. They weren’t the same person, no matter their face and clothes. They spoke differently, thought differently, believed differently, moved differently, were wounded differently.

If he could just keep them talking, they’d give themselves away. They couldn’t keep up this double act forever.

What Mark couldn’t stop wondering was how the on earth the boy was still standing, whichever Stark he was. He’s been on his deathbed yesterday, but a little oxygen, food, and sheet grit were enough to get him on his feet, inventing acids, and taking down guards? Those biologists would be missing out on something spectacular if things went south.

“You’re the only one with a gun,” Close Stark admitted, “but guns aren’t the worst weapons these days. Bad PR can be just as devastating. I thought you’d know that, being the marketing man that you are. Wielding a gun these days? Amateur.”

He sounded out of breath, but then so did Far Stark. One of them was faking to hide the boy’s symptoms. That or the real Stark had sustained some sot of injury during the explosions. Impossible to say.

“Sometimes the classics are all a man needs,” Mark said, tapping a fingernail against the gun. “Although I’m surprised you’re not wielding the one you took from my office.” Neither of them looked armed, which meant they had realized the rest of the offensive weaponry in the building had already been packed up and shipped off.

“We don’t need it,” Close Stark said. “We’re not killers.”

That was laughably false in Stark’s case, so that was probably the boy talking them. Although Stark might say something like that just to throw him off. He’d have to look for something more subtle. More instinctual.

“Not killers?” Mark bluffed. “Tell that to the two corpses who got caught in your explosions.”

The guilt that flew across both their faces simultaneously was irritatingly unhelpful.

“Would it make you feel better or worse if I told you their names?” Mark taunted. Both Starks seemed to shake the thought off at the same time, although it was Close Stark who responded.

“We’ve got enough names ourselves. Ramirez. Wyatt. Korhonen.”

“Hansen,” Far Stark added. “Williams.”

Mark’s brain ground to a halt at the mention of the last name. He definitely didn’t have a file for someone named Williams. And he didn’t have the original file either. They must have been remembering the name wrong. Every other one they’d said was from his own Master’s files that they’d stolen.

“I already knew you stole my files,” Mark said. “But you’re quicker studies than I thought you’d be.” Just how long had they had those damn files? How much of that information was already in their heads?

“Oh, we’ve been studying for a long time,” Far Stark, said, taking a single step forward. “All those articles and papers of your you left in the lab to inspire us? Well, we started wondering how one rather average man could research so many different areas. Turns out, he can’t. No one can. You’re a thief.”

A thief? That was his big accusation. He sounded like a child. In fact, 60/40 that Far Stark was really the boy. His first hint, but not enough to make him shoot.

“I wouldn’t be calling people thieves, boy. You’re the ones who stole files you have no claim too.”

Nothing in his face acknowledged the name. He retorted quick as ever. “And you have no claim to the ideas inside them.”

That was an idea that both the boy and Stark held. Still a stupid one though.

“The heat of my Crucible forged them. The people created things because of me, so why shouldn’t they be mine?”

“They created things in spite of you,” Close Stark retorted, still kneeling on the ground.

Mark rolled his eyes. Talking to two smart-ass Starks was already grating on his nerves.

“Is there a difference?” Mark asked. Maybe spouting his philosophy and seeing how the reacted to it would offer the clues he needed. “Either way, I was heavily involved. I told you, Stark, inventions don’t belong to the mind who happens across them first. Once conceived of, they make their own way into the world.”

He paused, looking for a spark of recognition in their faces but found none. Mark ground his teeth. It was possible they’d shared information about their private conversations with Mark so he couldn’t catch them in such a simple trap. That or they had decent poker faces. But whatever their strategy, they couldn’t do it perfectly. He’d figure it out, use pressure points until one of them flinched.

“Make their way into the world?” Far Stark asked, taking another step forward. “Only because they’re helped along by psychos like you.”

Mark took an instinctive step back, maintaining the distance. “I think you mean geniuses,” he said.

“You’re no genius,” Close Stark said, and Mark turned to look at him again. Had he scooted forward a few feet while Mark wasn’t looking? They were far enough apart that when he was looking at one, the other was trapped in his periphery. “You’re keeping the geniuses locked up in the basement and copying their homework.”

“And you’re struggling to understand the way of the Crucible,” Mark said, taking another step back as Far Stark took one forward. “It’s pressure pushes its contents to greatness. It might not be the natural flow of inventing, but in time you’ll come to appreciate it.”

“I think not,” Close Stark said at the same time Far Stark said, “I doubt it.”

Smoke was starting to fill the room. Mark could easily smell it in the air. He had to get this over with.

“Come now, Stark,” Mark pressed. “Are you telling me that in all your years of inventing and creating and innovating you’ve never stolen an idea? Borrowed, perhaps? Been heavily inspired by? Maybe even with the intent to give credit one day? Paid to keep someone quiet about their involvement in a project?”

The answer came from both mouths simultaneously.

“No.”

“Truly a genius then. But not all of us are so blessed. You mind is your weapon. My weapons are the people I hone.”

“People aren’t weapons,” Close Stark said while Far Stark’s mouth dropped open. Who was more likely to be appalled by that statement? Surely the boy was, with his youthful naivete. Stark had doubtlessly used people as weapons in his lifetime. 65/35 Far Stark was the boy. His trigger finger twitched, but Mark wanted. Still not sure enough. Too much room for error.

“Aren’t they?” Mark asked. “They can be heated and twisted and beaten and changed by a Forge Master skilled enough to melt them down and pour them into the mold they’ll need to survive. How is that different from a sword or a spear or a gun?”

“It’s different because no one is that skilled,” Far Stark said. “People are more complicated than alloys. No two are the same. You can’t possibly predict how they’ll react and change to certain situations.”

“Spoken like a man who’s never tried,” Mark said, mentally adding a few more points to Far Stark being the idealistic boy. 70/30 now. “People are more similar than you’d think. Only a few key components truly matter. The Crucible assays them, tells me the components, and teaches me how to mold them better the longer they stay.”

“Even if you could change people like that, you’re still stealing their ideas” Far Stark said. “It’s wrong.”

75/25 he’d gotten the right one. The boy was almost making it easy for him. He was going to mentally count up to at least 90 before taking the shot though. Unless things got hairy.

“Then what about the boy? He use my accident to create the explosives that caused your diversion, right? How is that any less of a theft?”

“You stole his work first by barging into the lab,” Far Stark said, and Mark mentally retracted the odds back to 70/30. It wasn’t like the boy to defend himself like that.

“I don’t think you realize how bad this acid is for you,” Close Stark said, jumping back into the conversation. Mark noticed with a jolt that he’d inched forward another foot or two while he was watching Far Stark. “It targets caminium specifically. Your pride and joy. Releasing it in whatever black market circles you usually sell in would be devastating to your sales. It’s just another reason that you’ve lost. You’re better off changing your name and picking an island in the south pacific to inhabit. Innovation will be what destroys you in the end.”

“Look at you, monologuing like a professional villain.”

“I’m not monologuing. I’m threatening.”

“Sorry, hard to tell the difference sometimes. But I don’t blame you for singing the praises of your protege’s invention. It feels good, doesn’t it? Feels good to have his genius recognized? To take just a little bit of the credit for yourself because you know you contributed?”

Close Stark just glared.

“I can appreciate your genius too,” Mark said. “Selling the dissolvent to certain circles will make me a pretty penny. You won’t mind if I fold that idea into my business plan?”

“You would sell a weapon effective only against your own metal?” Close Stark said. Hmm, he’d expect such naivete from the boy, not from Stark. Down to 65/35. Damn these two for being so in sync. Not a single “kid” or “Mr. Stark” anywhere, which were their most obvious tells.

“It’s either that or someone else will,” Mark said. “It’s a simple game of rock, paper, scissors. If people have been buying scissors for a long time because it’s been effective, it won’t be hard to sell them rocks next.”

“Playing both sides like that won’t work out in the long run,” Close Stark said, and Mark just rolled his eyes.

“No sides, remember? And by the time the ‘long run’ comes along, I’ll be on to my next set of inventions.” He turned to Far Stark, still his bet for being the boy. “And don’t think this won’t come back to haunt you. Your acid will be weaponized against you one day, and you’ll understand the true nature of inventions, as Stark does. Sleep with one eye open, for creations are like children; they keep coming home to roost.” He gave his best smile. “Welcome to the land of the weapon-builders, young Oppenheimer.”

“One acid is nothing like an atomic bomb,” Far Stark said. But he said it petulantly, like he didn’t quite believe it. It was Close Stark who had a scowl of rejection on his face.

“Give it time. You’ll get there,” Mark said, noticing Close Stark scooting forward another few inches. He swung the gun back to him, stopping him in his tracks. Fifteen feet away now. “Now, this conversation is dragging on a bit for me, so I’ve got one more offer for the great Tony Stark. If he reveals himself now and leaves with me willingly, I swear on my name as a Master, I’ll leave the boy where he stands, unharmed.”

The Starks glanced at each other quickly, considering the offer. Mark hoped Stark took it. Then Mark could leave the boy handcuffed to a fixture somewhere in the helicopter bay, unharmed. Until the cold from the open roof did him in or he burned with the building before help arrived.

More smoke was leaking in through the vents, and streams of it were even flowing in through the main door. Flickering orange light reflected off the steel door and limned the smoke billows, hinting at a fire down the hallway.

“The name of a Master doesn’t mean much around here.”

“Not much is better than nothing at all,” Mark said. Decide carefully.”

They shared another glance. An unsure glance. They were weakening. Time to really push.

“Oh, I’ll figure you out, Stark. Don’t think I won’t. And if I get the chance to do it on my own terms, I’m more than happy to be the reason your mentee dies like a dog on the floor. I hear that’s how Yinsen died. A repeat of that seems fitting.”

It was a shot in the dark, but apparently a good one. Close Stark’s visage darkened as he glared at Mark. A quick glance at Far Stark showed he was watching the other Stark, perhaps worried about how he’d react? 70/30 now that Close Stark was the real one.

“We’re not repeating anything here today,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Mark pressed. “You’re trying to buy time. Isn’t that was he did? The only thing that’s different here is you don’t have it in you to save him. You’re no Yinsen.”

“It’s a hard pass on your deal, Mark, in case you couldn’t tell.”

Of course it was. They couldn’t make anything easy for him today, could they?

“Alright then,” Mark growled, getting annoyed at how long this was taking. “Maybe I’ll just shoot you both. Save myself the trouble.”

“No marksman holds a gun they way you do,” Close Stark. “You don’t have it in you.”

Another 5 points to that being Stark, the weapons manufacturer. What would a teenage boy know about guns and marksmen. 75/25. Just 15 points to shooting.

But Stark was right. He was no sharpshooter. He’d barely passed the Master’s firing exam. His bad shoulder was already throbbing from holding it up for so long. He needed Veneer from team three who’d left this morning. She could pick them off from across the room.

“The things you don’t know about me would surprise you,” Mark said, trying to hide how right the man was about his shooting abilities. “I know you’ve got the files stashed somewhere around here—no doubt part of the boy’s plan to hunt me down once you escape. But tracking them down won’t help you. They won’t help you. It’s you who’ve already lost because they all belong to the Crucible now.”

“Even if they’re scared of you, I bet a few superheroes helping would make them feel safe enough to help,” Far Stark said. He advanced two steps as if illustrating his point. “Something tells me they wouldn’t react too kindly to that.”

He was right. It was exactly why he couldn’t let them escape with the files, although he’d never admit that to them.

“What do you know of the Guild ways?” Mark said, hating how much they made him jump around in conversation topics. Maybe philosophy would be the way to go again. Or maybe he should just shoot Far Stark now. Was 75/25 good enough odds?

“We don’t know much,” Far Stark said as Mark sized him up, “but we do know they wouldn’t allow a screw-up this bad to go unpunished. I mean, all it took was getting your sorry ass instead of Williams for the Poison Master to almost lose his job. This would be so much bigger than that.”

The shock fell on Mark’s shoulders like a weight. What dd they know? How did they know it? He didn’t have Williams’ file. Maybe it had been mentioned in Mark’s own file, but to what extent? Mark had looked at the thing in years.

Maybe they’d hacked into the computer system and gotten more than Mark realized. He was toast if they’d accessed the Guild servers. And if they’d gotten that far, they might have figured out how to contact the Avengers. His eyes flashed between them nervously. Were they just stalling for time until help arrived? That brought shooting odds down.

“Bring up some bad memories, are we?” Close Stark asked, as Mark wiped the shock from his face. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen you speechless.”

“Not speechless,” Mark spat out. “Just calculating where you got your information from. And how complete it it.”

“Not complete enough,” Far Stark said with another step forward. Fifteen feet for him now, closer to ten for the Stark who was still kneeling. They were like a pack of hyenas, closing in on their prey. “What happened to Williams?”

Why should they care? Why should they know?

“The inevitable,” was all Mark said.

“Sounds like you have a hand in turning him in,” Far Stark observed. “Doesn’t sound inevitable to me.”

“My hand or someone else’s hand, the results would have been the same.” The gun was trained on Far Stark again, who’d taken at least three steps forward in his pursuit of the answer. He was getting too close. Was it worth shooting?

“You can’t know what the results would have been,” Close Stark said, but he was drowned out by Far Stark’s demanding repeated question.

“What happened to Williams?”

He really wasn’t going to leave this alone.

“What happened to Yinsen,” Mark hissed. “What happens to any of us? Why does it matter?”

“So he’s dead,” Far Stark said with finality. Then, “How did he die?”

The image of a dark night pierced by light from an opening door and outstretched hand with an offer of escape flooded Mark’s mind, but he pushed it away.

“Not at my hand.”

Technically true, but neither Stark would see it that way if they knew the whole story.

“You were the one who turned in an innocent colleague. Your hands.”

“There’s no such thing as an innocent, remember?” Mark said. Far Stark was nearly as close as Close Stark now, relentless in his advance. “And it was bring him in or be killed. They would have left me to die.” This was not what mark wanted o be reliving right now. Why were they so focused on this one name, this one story?

“Then you should have died,” Close Stark said. “Better that than to bring someone else into this to take your place.”

The hypocrisy was stifling. Or maybe that was just the smoke.

“Then why are _you_ here, Stark?” Mark said, swinging the gun to Close Stark for a moment. “By your reasoning, the boy should have been left to die as well, just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He baited you in just as surely as I baited Williams. Maybe he’ll follow the same pattern and become a Master someday. History does love to repeat itself.”

Mark was loathe to admit it out loud, but it had been part of the reason he’d targeted the boy after his initial interference at the gala. It had felt like fate. Like a repeat of his own cursed blunder years ago that had landed him with the Poison Master.

But he’d quickly realized the boy was far too different. He’d been blinded by the surface similarities, and now what made the boy different underneath was threatening the whole operation. A few moments of nostalgia were going to ruin everything.

“You baited me here, not him,” Close Stark said. “And I made the choice myself. You took that choice away from Williams.”

“I had no choice myself,” Mark said, taking a few steps back. “I didn’t have anyone looking out for me. No one willing to throw around money or snark or their life to get me out. I was on my own. Alone.”

“Being alone doesn’t make wrong things right,” Far Stark said.

Mark would have rolled his eyes at the mention of ridiculous morals again, but he couldn’t afford to take his eyes off of them.

“What happened to Williams?” Far Stark asked again. “I’ll find out how he died sooner or later.”

“I. Didn’t. Kill. Him.”

The building creaked and shuddered once, like it had lost a support, but the Starks barely even flinched.

“No, you just aimed the gun,” Close Stark pointed out. His voice was hoarse, but that could be due to the smoke just as easily as pneumonia. Mark could feel an itch growing in the back of his own throat too. No clue there.

“Don’t think you can burden me with the same guilt you so love to carry. I know my choice was inevitable. The Crucible always gets her man. Always burns away the dross until the real mettle shows.”

“I’m surprised there’s anything left of you,” Far Stark said, taking two more damn steps forward. Mark took two steps back, and his shoulders struck the cool metal of the helicopter behind him. Smoke billowed around his feet at the motion, further swirling from the chill draft of the open ceiling above him. Nowhere to go. “I guess playing along turns down the heat.”

“What you call playing along gave me my life back!” Mark roared, surprised at how anger flared in his chest. Who were they to judge? They hadn’t been there. No one had. Just Mark. “Playing along let me prove myself and rise within the Guild. It gave me Caminium and a hundred other inventions besides. Playing along was the only option give to me!”

“There’s always another option,” Far Stark said, the frustration in his voice clear. Easy to say if you didn’t have a helicopter blocking your retreat. Time was running out.

“Here’s an option for you then, boy. Reveal yourself, and I’ll let you live. Just like me and Williams. We’ll go and leave you here to call for help.”

The boy was going to judge him for turning Williams in? Let him see the tantalizing hope of freedom after hell dangled before him. Let him have the same choice. Die. Or play along. He was sure enough that if the boy refused him, he was taking the shot.

“Ohhhh, I get it now,” Far Stark said, the metaphorical light bulb nearly visible over his head.

That…was not a response Mark had been anticipating. The frustration was gone from his voice. The aggression had dropped away completely.

“Get what?”

“Get you,” Far Stark said, for once stopped his advance. “How you live with yourself. How you can believe there’s no such thing as an innocent. The basis for your whole stupid philosophy. You believe whatever makes it so you don’t have to feel bad about killing your friend.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Mark defended reflexively. “He was supposed to help me. He just wasn’t strong enough.”

“If you believe he wasn’t an innocent, then him dying isn’t so bad,” Far Stark continued. “And if the Crucible is some all-powerful force that forged you into a weapon that someone else wielded, then all the blame for your actions goes to them. You chose the easy way out instead of the right way.”

Why did the words he was saying feel like the truth?

“Nothing about the Crucible is easy,” Mark said, watching as Close Stark slid forward another foot on his knees.

“Believing that you do is easier than believing you’re the kind of person who would kill a friend.”

“We barely knew each other,” Mark protested, eyes flicking between the advancing men. “He wasn’t a friend, and he certainly wasn’t an innocent. But don’t pretend like you know me, Stark. Boy. Whoever you are. I don’t slot into your world view like a puzzle view.”

“But you do,” Far Stark said confidently. “And we finally understand each other.”

That had to be the kid. He’d always been the one to figure things out. But Stark had been keyed in too. Either one of them could have come to this conclusion. The gun flipped between the two men as Mark vacillated. Still only 75/25.

“Until you understand the Crucible, you’ll never understand me," Mark said. "It changed me in ways I had no control over. That’s its strength. That’s its power.”

“Don’t pretend it was fate that warped you,” Close Stark said. “If that were true, you would have been able to warp Spider-Man, but he was stronger than your Crucible. He had a choice and so did you. He was strong enough. You weren’t.”

Far Stark coughed suddenly. Twice loudly, then a few muffled ones. His arms remained tense at his sides. 80/20 that was the boy and his pneumatic lungs. Although the smoke filling the room was getting to even Mark, making his eyes water. He pressed forward with his argument.

“His resistance is the fault of the Master, not the Crucible. I brought her metal reinforced with the false strength of youth. I struck while the iron was too cold. Maybe I’ll give him time to age and crack, then bring him back when he’s bitter and brittle and try again. The Crucible always gets her man.”

“No. Not this time. Neither of us will be back here. We’re the last. The end of your Crucible.”

They thought so similarly. Or at least could hide it well enough. What wouldn’t they be able to change? The boy’s protective instincts. Stark’s guilt.

The boy saw good intentions in Stark where Stark saw only guilt. Let’s see how much the boy could resist defending him.

“This will be the end of _you_. Or at least of the boy. How’s that going to feel, Stark? One more body with a bullet in it to add to your list.”

“Not going to happen,” Far Stark said firmly.

“If my kills make me a villain, what do yours make you?” Mark tried again. “My dozens compared to your thousands? A lifetime of creating weapons, much like my Crucible.”

Silence.

Then, Far Stark again. “I tried to do what I thought was best. You can’t fault a man for that.”

Maybe you couldn’t fault a man for that, but Stark still did.

The real Stark.

Not the fake Stark who was talking. The odds were 85/15, good enough odds without an obvious tell, especially if a team of Avengers was possibly on the way and the building was about ready to collapse.

Were he a marksman, he would go for non-lethal now and save the killing shot for once he knew for sure. He’d have done that ten minutes ago were he a marksman.

“Death can fault whoever it fancies,” Mark said, swinging the gun around to point at Far Stark, at the Boy Stark. He took a step forward, and the Boy Stark took a step back, his eyes widening dramatically. “Deal’s off. I’ve found what I’m looking for. You’re not him, and you never will be.”

A grin crept onto his face as he cocked the gun for the first shot with a loud snap.

But before he could fire, Close Stark screamed, voice breaking. Two simple words.

“Mr. Stark!”

Mark flinched at the sudden volume, then smiled.

There was the true tell. The name. The name that only he used. That coupled with his inability to stand by and watch while people close to him were hurt. The undercurrent of youthful terror in the voice was just the icing on the cake.

He swung the gun back to the closer Stark, still kneeling on the ground and holding the pair of handcuffs uselessly in front of him. His eyes were wide, but he hadn’t gotten up from the floor. His injuries probably made that too difficult without help.

“Like I said, the Crucible always gets her man,” Mark said, leveling the gun like he’d learned in training.

He fired all fives bullets in the gun, not taking any chances that the boy would miraculously recover again.

At least two of them hit their mark. A dark spot of red leaped to life on his left leg, causing him to clutch at it awkwardly as he twisted and fell. A second circle of blood raised on his upper back as he collapsed to the ground.

“No!” Stark’s anguished scream behind him had Mark swinging the empty gun to face him, a bluff that would hopefully keep him back.

“Stay away unless you want the same,” he said, crossing the short distance between him and the downed Stark, who yelled “Stay back!” to his counterpart. The still-standing Stark appeared frozen in horror.

A harsh shove to his shoulder rolled the shot Stark onto his back, where he jackknifed, trying to curl around his wounds. There was already so much blood. Seeping around the collar of his jumpsuit, beading down his neck like a cut throat.

Mark ripped open the jumpsuit, revealing a white shirt underneath stained with red on one side. Three hits then. Not bad for an amateur. He yanked up the shirt, looking for shackles or missing ribs to confirm his kill.

Nothing.

The rib shackles were nowhere to be seen. Not on either side. Just a fresh bleeding wound between two ribs where he’d been shot. That meant—

A sharp pain and pressure sprang to life in his left shoulder, and he glanced over, shocked to see Stark’s hands clutching a needle that now stuck out of Mark’s arm, the depressor flush against the body of the now empty syringe.

“Wrong one, you bastard,” the Stark under his hands said with a grunt. The actual Stark. Not the boy Stark who he’d been targeting but he man Stark who he’d just shot.

Son of a—

Mark listed to the side, catching himself with the hand that held the gun. He could feel the same effects as before, but even stronger. Head spinning, vision doubling. Damn Stark and his needles.

The gun was kicked from his hand, and Mark looked up to see the other Stark, the boy Stark, move to kneel over the Stark on the ground. He was gasping, tears running down his face as he pressed a hand to man Stark’s bloody side and leg.

“Why would you do that? You said…your name…you shouldn’t have…”

“I got him, didn’t I?”

“Not again…We need…you need…we need to get out together.”

“Then get us out,” the man Stark ground out through gritted teeth, followed immediately by a grunt of pain. He threw he head back against the ground. “Officially passing the torch to you, kid.”

Darkness was pulling at Mark’s vision, and he knew he’d been beaten. Stark had likely not been careful about administering a non-lethal dose. If he managed to survive that, he’d probably wake up again—if the boy and his morals had anything to say about it—but Mark wouldn’t mind if he never woke up. The Masters would have punishments for botching a Crucible this badly. For shooting Tony Stark and letting Spider-Man escape with a head full of intel. It would be a mercy killing at this pint. Shame the boy didn’t have it in him.

But the look on the boy’s Stark face suddenly make Mark doubt. Rage shone wetly in his eyes when he looked at Mark, a deep rage fit for the older face that carried it, not for the younger face underneath that had formed it.

Maybe killing Tony Stark was going to be the Crucible that broke Spider-Man, that warped even his vibranium moral compass.

Interesting.

The darkness encroached, and Mark threw his energy to a few parting words. Words for the man Stark, who’d always been the target, but also words to incense Spider-Man. To break him.

“He’d be proud, Stark,” Mark mumbled, his words slurring a little. “Looks like you’re a Yinsen after all.”

The rage in Spider-Man’s eyes intensified, and a snarl worthy of a starved jaguar spread across his features as he turned.

Yes, Mark might not wake up after all.

At the thought, he felt a strange surge of victory. That would be his final proof, proof that no man escaped the Crucible unchanged. Spider-Man had been untouchable. Unforgeable. Unmoldable. If the Crucible managed to mold his vibranium moral compass into something lesser, then Mark himself had never stood a chance. The Crucible warped all it touched. Her power was all-consuming. The Crucible always got her man. It was inevitable. It was fate.

Murdered at the hand of Spider-Man? What a victory that would be.

Mark’s final sight was Spider-Man rising from his knees, shoulders squared towards Mark as Stark’s face masked his own and Stark’s blood dripped from his hands.

A step forward.

Then darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t kill me for ending it there! I really had no choice you see, because the POV character passed out, and then there was just nothing I could do; my hands were tied!
> 
> Do let me know your favorite lines/moments in this chapter and your experience as a reader. I find it all fascinating! And come ask me things on Tumblr if you want. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.
> 
> Peter POV coming next. It’s short, so it should be up within the week.


	33. Bleeding Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter knelt over Mr. Stark, pressing already blood-soaked hands to his wounds as his spider sense screamed in his ear. Everything else was eerily silent, almost in slow motion, like the last eight seconds had been. Like every excruciating second since Mr. Stark had sacrificed himself by screaming out his own name—no, not just his own name, Peter’s name for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just couldn't let you wait too long after that last chapter, so enjoy a short Peter POV!

Peter knelt over Mr. Stark, pressing already blood-soaked hands to his wounds as his spider sense screamed in his ear. Everything else was eerily silent, almost in slow motion, like the last eight seconds had been. Like every excruciating second since Mr. Stark had sacrificed himself by screaming out his own name—no, not just his own name, Peter’s name for him.

And Peter had stood there like an idiot, like he was having an out-of-body experience, like he’d been trying so hard to become Tony Stark that somehow it had worked and the Tony Stark across the room was the fake one. Why else would he be using that name?

A hand slipped off Mr. Stark’s bloodied leg and slapped onto the floor, and he left it there. He couldn’t even think. What wound was the worst. Back? Side? Leg? The leg had an artery or something, right. But the side had lots of stuff. So did the back. Were either of the shots close to a lung? He couldn’t remember anything from anatomy class. Couldn’t remember how fatal shots like this might be. Couldn’t remember if he ever even knew.

Mr. Stark had used his own name. The one he’d warned Peter about using. And Peter had been too slow to realize Mr. Stark’s plan until it was too late. Until Mark had swung the gun around, and by then it was too late. Too late to jump in front or tackle Mark or do anything to stop Mr. Stark from protecting him with everything Peter had told him not to.

“Kid,” Mr. Stark gasped quietly from the floor. “What’s the plan?”

Peter didn’t have an answer.

Would the blood on his hands even listen to any pathetic plan he might come up with?

Ben’s blood hadn’t listened. Yinsen’s blood hadn’t listened either.

He didn’t know how Yinsen had died though. Or Williams. Maybe they hadn’t been this bloody. Maybe they hadn’t been like Ben. Like Mr. Stark.

Why were deaths always so damn bloody?

“He’d be proud, Stark,” Mark mumbled, his words slurring a little, but Peter heard every syllable with a clarity lent by panic. “Looks like you’re a Yinsen after all.”

Peter stood and spun around in one movement, his hands clenched at his sides, furious. Raging. He’d never felt true anger in his life, but he understood it now. It roared like an ocean in his chest, bottomless and never ending. Waves of rage crashed against his ribs and stole his breath, spilling over and running down his arms, burning hot where Mr. Stark’s blood touched his skin, dripping from his fingertips and splashing onto the floor.

No. Not “Mr. Stark’s” blood. Peter couldn’t use that name anymore. It was far too dangerous to use. Had maybe gotten the man killed.

And the man who had maybe killed him was right there, collapsed on the ground because Mr. Star—his mentor had managed to dose him after being shot. Like the true hero he was.

Peter glared at Mark, the eye contact unsatisfying through the unfocused haze of drugs in Mark’s eyes. They slid shut before Peter had time to voice any of the thousand questions and accusations clamoring for words inside his head.

He stood, paralyzed by the unconscious man on the floor in front of him. His heartbeat was still there. A little slow, a little irregular, but it was still there.

It shouldn’t be there.

It didn’t deserve to be there.

Not when Mr. Sta—his mentor’s heartbeat was racing behind him, pumping blood out through a set of holes that were all wrong.

As if sensing his dilemma, his mentor spoke up roughly.

“You’ll regret it, but if you’re going to do it, then hurry up.”

The advice rung in Peter’s ears like funeral bells.

Was he going to do it? What was he supposed to do in a situation like this?

He hadn’t killed Ben’s killer. Mr. Stark had probably killed Yinsen’s killers. Had anyone killed Williams’s killers?

How did those stories end? How did this story end? What story were they in?

Ben’s? Yinsen’s? Williams’s?

Queens? Afghanistan? Mark’s Crucible?

Did it matter which story when everyone ended up dead anyway?

Peter was breathing hard enough that the spots were back in his vision, like the stupid night all this had started. At the gala. He never knew what to do. Why couldn’t he know what to do, just once?

“Kid, we can’t both pass out. Go get the oxygen mask and put it on.”

A singular voice of reason in the chaos of Peter’s mind. Get the oxygen tank. He could do that. He would do that. Then he’d come back decide about Mark. Maybe he’d be dead by the time he got back. Maybe everyone would be.

But Mr. St—the man was right. If Peter passed out, then he’d really fail everyone.

They’d left the tank and pillowcase just outside the bay. It only took a few seconds to retrieve them both, but every second felt like an eternity. Like a heart’s last beat. Like a lung’s last breath.

He slid the mask on as quickly as he could, unable to deny how much his cleared his vision. It didn’t take away the aches in his sides though, or the pounding confusion in his head. He could see a bright orange glow from down the hall. Those explosive had really done a number on the building. And those two guards Mark had talked about. How many corpses would this building see today?

When Peter returned to the bay, the two men were still on the floor, both breathing. Not corpses yet.

Peter knelt next to his mentor, replacing the older man’s weak hands applying pressure with his own shaky ones again, unsure if he was even helping. A pool of blood spread out from behind the man’s right shoulder from where he’d been shot in the back.

Peter just pressed and stared. How could he not know what to do when the most important man in his life, the man who’d risked everything to save him, the only reason Peter was still breathing, was bleeding out on the floor in front of him?

All because Peter was weak. So weak that Mr. Stark felt the need to protect him. With his own name.

_Mr. Stark!_

He’d never be able to hear that name again. Never be able to say it again.

What if he never got the chance to say it again?

“Kid, finish the plan.”

“That wasn’t the plan. Wasn’t the story,” Peter gasped out through the mask. He felt like he should be saying something else. Doing something else. Weren’t there things to be doing? Here he was, claiming to be a superhero, and now at the biggest real emergency he’d encountered, he couldn’t even hope to think of a plan.

“We write the story, kid.”

He’d said that before. Not history repeating itself. Not anyone else’s story.

He wasn’t dead yet. Maybe Peter could still stop it from happening.

“I think I’ve contributed enough for the moment, so I really need you to take over,” his mentor said through a grimace. “Remember those helicopter lessons? Let’s put those to use.”

“Yeah, I think so.” He remembered them like they’d been given a million years ago, but not remembering wasn’t really an option.

But there was something else first.

“We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”

“With what?”

“With anything.”

“There’s usually a first aid kit on helicopters. Let’s load up.” His mentor tried and failed to push himself into a sitting position. Peter helped him up, staggering a little under the weight when they finally stood. They limped up the loading ramp to the helicopter where Peter helped the man lay on the ground near the front before pulling the clearly labeled and blessedly large first aid kit off the wall.

He tore it open, ripping open a few sterile gauze bandages. He propped up Mr. Stark’s leg and wrapped it up as tightly as he dared. Getting the side and back were harder. He pulled Mr. Stark up, almost tipping over himself as he caught the man’s weight. He added large piles of gauze to both wounds before wrapping bandages around his torso, praying it would hold.

Laying his mentor back to the floor of the helicopter caused grunts of pain from both of them, but he managed.

“See, you’re a pro,” his mentor said lightly from the floor, but his face had paled considerably, and he was sweating now.

Peter dropped the first aid kit and stood up, eyes already toward the cockpit as he tried to remember what Tony had told him about flying a helicopter. Was he really going to do this?

There was a metallic clinking sound as he moved toward the front of the helicopter, then a sharp pain in his left ribs blinded him for a few seconds. When his vision came back he was on his knees. The chain still attached to two ribs had been pulled loose from his pocket and caught on a screw. He yanked it off with a grunt, the spikes stabbing at his fingers as he did, trying to remember the plan.

What was he supposed to be doing? Standing up or flying a helicopter? Either sounded equally impossible, but he though he was supposed to do both. Was this really the plan? Because there was a good chance Peter would get them both killed this way.

“Kid, you okay?”

No response. What response could there possibly be to that question?

“We’ve got to get going. Shut the door. You got this.”

Peter was on his feet before he knew it, pulling the door closed and heading to the pilot’s seat. At least Mr. Sta—his mentor knew what to do. He always did. He was the brains of the whole operation. And the heart. Peter was just the shaky hands trying to do as they were told.

Useless. Mark should have shot him instead. What was one or two more holes in him if it meant Mr. Stark could be the one doing all this. At least he’d do it right.

Through the windshield of the chopper he could see the chopper bay, substantial amounts of smoke leaking through the doors and spiraling up through the open ceiling. Mark still lay on the floor, unloaded crates all around him.

If this were a regular mission, no way would they be leaving yet. The police weren’t here yet to slap cuffs on the bad guy. Illegal and dangerous weapons and materials were scattered everywhere. There were probably other bad guys and weapons hidden elsewhere in the base. Leaving now would mean complete failure for a traditional mission.

How warped was the world that flying away now was even the tiniest bit a victory? The scope of a regular mission had shrunk from stopping the bad guys and bringing down the evil corporation to running away so he could save Mr. Stark.

With Peter’s hands at the controls, the helicopter rose shakily into the air, leaving the Crucible and its Master far beneath and far behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Come hang out on Tumblr and let me know your thoughts/questions. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	34. "Stay with me"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was not the ideal escape. Sure, things could have be worse—it could have been the kid who’d gotten shot—but having a panicking spider kid piloting his very first helicopter after watching his mentor get shot and then almost killing the guy who did it? Yeah, Tony had hoped for a little smoother of an exit. And a less painful one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will be completely uploaded by the end of the month, so savor these last few chapters. ;)

This was not the ideal escape. Sure, things could have be worse—it could have been the kid who’d gotten shot—but having a panicking spider kid piloting his very first helicopter after watching his mentor get shot and then almost killing the guy who did it? Yeah, Tony had hoped for a little smoother of an exit. And a less painful one.

The helicopter jerked, and Tony grunted from where he lay on the hard helicopter floor, the hard grating underneath him being anything but kind to where he’d been shot in the back. The padding of the gauze Peter had put there may as well be sandpaper.

The first sensations after being shot—aside from the force transference of being struck by a fast-moving projectile—had been numbness, weakness, and wetness. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t feel his leg, could only feel something warm and wet seeping through his clothes.

It had felt strange, uncomfortable, but shock had stopped it from truly hurting. Until Peter had hauled him up, dragged him to the helicopter, and bandaged everything up to stop the bleeding. Now, Tony would give his left leg to only be feeling numbness and wetness. Which he might be losing anyway, seeing as his whole leg below the knee was tingling.

“Careful!” Tony shouted as another jerk forced him to grab the leg of a nearby seat to stop from sliding around. Tony didn’t recall helicopter rides with a professional pilot being particularly fluid—part of the trade-off for having a smaller aircraft—but Peter’s erratic flying was making Tony wonder if he’d even managed to fly the helicopter in the video game he’d mentioned without crashing.

“You be careful!” Peter yelled back from the pilot’s seat, where he was clutching the joystick hard enough Tony was pretty sure he could see dents in it. He’d come back to himself a little since the panic in the hangar, probably because he had something to distract himself with.

A natural snarky response swelled in Tony’s throat, but he swallowed it back. It wouldn’t help. The kid was already struggling. Held together by pure adrenaline, or just coming off a rush. That would explain the shaking hands. Hell, about six things would explain the shaking hands. High on the list being that they were still visibly covered with Tony’s blood, which was being smeared around the various buttons and panels of the cockpit.

The sight of his own blood spread so far and wide made Tony’s stomach twist. His pulse hammered against each of his three bullet wounds, the constant throbs of pain a reminder of where that blood had come from.

“Why are there so many buttons?” Peter yelled in frustration through his oxygen mask. “Where the hell is the autopilot?”

He flipped through a manual he’d pulled out of god only knew where with one hand, leaving smears of scarlet blood on the yellowing pages.

Tony might have yelled a response back, but he was just realizing how painful even the motions of breathing were. It seemed foolish to waste air and energy just to uselessly yell, “I don’t know!”

Instead he lay still, trying to find a way to breathe without expanding his rib cage too much, but every motion pulled painfully at his back and his side, demanding more movement than they could comfortably give.

The kid turned to look back at Tony suddenly, as if suspicious of his silence. His hands followed his gaze and the chopper turned slightly, but it was the sight of Tony’s face still on the kid that made Tony’s stomach lurch this time.

Peter met Tony’s gaze for a second, then turned back and corrected the chopper, returning to the manual.

“There’s a radio too, but it’ll probably just call the bad guys, right?” he called back.

He glanced back over his shoulder when Tony didn’t immediately answer, worry clear on his face. Apparently not talking made Peter think Tony was dead, no matter how much it hurt, keeping the kid relaxed and focused was the top priority right now.

“There should be an emergency frequency to alert anyone nearby,” Tony managed.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I sort of skipped pilot school. Rhodey just taught me the basics.”

“Great. Just great,” Peter ranted. He was working himself into a real state. “Don’t know how to use the radio…No, no, we can figure this out. Just call the cops and not the bad guys. How hard can that be? Oh my god, what if they’re tracking the helicopter right now? That’s something bad guys would be able to do. What if someone’s following us?”

He was panicking again. Time to put this to rest and redirect the kid. Again. That felt like all Tony had been doing since he’d gotten shot, but since it was just about all he _could _do while laying on the floor, he’d do it.

“We took the only helicopter, so no one’s following us,” Tony reasoned. “And Mark won’t be calling for backup any time soon.”

“But there were other people in the building,” Peter said, breathing harder. “Maybe they found Mark and already called for help. Unless the explosions actually did kill them. Oh my god, did we just kill people? Like, we basically sniped them. They didn’t even know we were there. They had no idea—”

“Worry about that later,” Tony said after another lurch that had pain whiting out his vision for a few seconds. He had to redirect Peter to something concrete. Maybe ask him a question he had to answer. “Focus on flying for now. What direction are we going?”

“North. That’s toward New York from Virginia, but I can’t figure out where we are exactly.”

“North is good. Perfect.”

“I’m landing at the first building I find that might have a phone.”

“Also good. Do what you have to do.”

That was kind of the theme of this whole escape, wasn’t it?

Peter rose from his seat, but the helicopter held steady. Apparently he’d figured out something with the autopilot then.

He moved quickly back to Tony, oxygen tank thumping behind, and knelt at his side, muttering to himself. His eyes widened, and Tony craned his neck to see blood leaking through the bandages at his side and leg. Great. Like the weight of piloting an aircraft for the first time wasn’t enough, now the kid had to deal with a patient who wouldn’t let him forget he was maybe dying. Maybe the piloting had been a useful distraction for the kid.

The kid was still wearing Tony’s face, which Tony didn’t like. But he’d have to take off the oxygen mask in order to take off the cloak, and he didn’t look like he could spare much oxygen, breathing as hard as he was.

“I don’t believe this,” Tony heard the kid mutter as he grabbed the first aid kit and looked at it helplessly. “I don’t believe this. What do I do? What did you do?” Then loud enough that Tony knew it was meant for him. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Tony said, intentionally misunderstanding. As long as Peter was arguing, then he wasn’t panicking. “He’ll live. Maybe.”

“That’s not what I mean. You said you wouldn’t be Yinsen.”

No way to misunderstand that.

“Sorry, kid. You’ve got too many rules.”

Peter grabbed a roll of tape and some more gauze, apparently doubling down on his first method. Which could have been right for all Tony knew. He wasn’t a doctor.

“Those were pretty much the only two rules,” he rambled as he wrapped tighter bandages around Tony’s leg. “Don’t kill him and don’t be Yinsen.”

“What about not benching you?” Tony got out through gritted teeth.

“Okay, three rules.”

“See, that’s too complicated for an old man like me.”

“Bullshit.” He sat back on his heels and Tony could see tears glistening in the corner of Peters—of Tony’s—eyes. “You knew…You’re too smart to…You were probably planning it the whole time.”

“Last resort,” Tony said. “Didn’t want to use it. Don’t regret it though.” He didn’t have the strength for enough words to make the kid really understand. Yinsen hadn’t either.

“You should regret it!” Peter said forcefully. “You can’t just…do you know what…why did you…”

He was breathing hard again, losing focus, panicking. They couldn’t let that happen.

“A little less yelling would be nice right now,” Tony said as soothingly as he could manage through the pain. And a little less freaking out. The last thing they needed was for their only semi-reliable helicopter pilot to have a panic attack.

“Well a little less bleeding would be even better!” Peter snapped back, then let out a single sob before scrunching his eyes shut. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Just…what do you need? I don’t know what to do?”

“Nothing. I don’t need a thing. Just get us to civilization and call someone.” Tony clenched his jaw against a spike of pain his his back, but only had the strength to hold it for a few seconds. Getting shot was _exhausting_.

“That’s not enough.”

Tony understood the sentiment. He could feel his adrenaline crashing as they spoke. His head spun, even laying still on the floor as he was.

“It’s got to be enough, kid,” Tony said, closing his eyes and focusing on deep breathing. As deep as he could manage through the biting pain in his side and back.

“It’s not,” Peter whispered.

They were both right.

“You did great, kid,” Tony said quietly. “Just like me. Mark had no clue.”

“He figured it out though. And then you…”

“No, you were great. But you can be you again now.”

The you before this whole Crucible mess, Tony thought. The you before Tony and his reputation had thrown Peter into the crosshairs.

Not the you Tony had seen in the helicopter bay for the few very confusing seconds when he’d thought Peter might actually kill Mark for everything he’d done.

The look on his face hadn’t been the thousand-yard stare of a shock victim; it had been the laser focus of a thousand-yard scope, picking out its victim. The look hadn’t been out of place on Tony’s face, but knowing the kid underneath was making it too had sent a chill down Tony’s spine.

He wouldn’t have blamed the kid for killing Mark right then, but the kid would definitely have blamed himself later.

“But who’s going to be you?” Peter whispered, interrupting the memory.

“I will, kid.”

But for how much longer? The deep breathing wasn’t helping. The world was spinning faster. Things didn’t hurt as much anymore, which felt both like a blessing and an omen.

Was this what dying felt like?

If Tony were a doctor, he would know. But if he were a doctor, this whole story would have gone differently.

“I’m going to look for the emergency radio frequency,” Peter said, kneeling up a little higher. “Maybe it’s in the manual.”

Tony reflexively grabbed his wrist, stopping him from leaving.

“Don’t go, Pete. Don’t worry about the radio.”

Peter looked torn, and Tony knew he was being selfish for asking this. He should give the kid a task. Distract him again so he wouldn’t have to watch. But he couldn't make himself let go of Peter's wrist. He could see beads of sweat rolling down the back of his hand as it shook with the effort to stay latched around the kid’s wrist.

“Stay with me until…” Tony couldn’t say it. “Just stay with me.”

“Someone’s got to be flying this thing.”

“In a minute.”

So Peter stayed.

Maybe he understood, maybe he didn’t. But he stayed.

And eventually whispered, “This was going to be a different story.”

“It is.”

But even as he said it, Tony questioned.

He was on a helicopter again, slowly losing consciousness. Like the last time, when Mark had tricked him with that fly bot. Was he dying this time, as his vision started darkening and his breath became tight in his chest? As something starting buzzing in his ears like quiet static?

If this was dying, he didn’t want it. He wanted to live, wanted to live to hear Pepper and Happy and Rhodey yell at him for being so stupid. Wanted to live to help the kid through whatever hell his healing was going to be. But at least he’d helped get him through the hell of the Crucible. That might have to be enough.

And if this was dying, he knew he didn’t want to do it alone.

And he didn’t want to do it while the kid was wearing the wrong face. Tony didn’t want to die looking into his own brown eyes tearing up. He wanted to see the kid. Remind himself that he’d saved him. That they’d saved each other.

The kid had obviously forgotten about the mask, having much more important things to worry about, but it suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world to get it off.

Tony reached up a hand to Peter’s face, reaching for the mask, but Peter was kneeling a little too high.

Instead, when Tony’s hand barely grazed his cheek, Peter leaned down and trapped it there with his own hand. Tony could feel the tears there. Could see the beard from the cloak but could feel only smooth skin and the straps from the oxygen mask.

Maybe this was fitting. Maybe this was the universe exacting a sense of balance. After all, this was what Yinsen had seen as he breathed his last: the face of Tony Stark crying over him.

Maybe history really was repeating itself. And who was Tony to argue with it?

Breath for one more sentence. One that would hopefully mean as much to Peter as it had meant to Tony that day.

The growing buzzing in Tony’s ears nearly drowned out his own quiet words, but he knew the kid would hear them. That was how the story went.

“Don’t waste your life, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> Feel free to yell at me in the comments or on Tumblr. I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	35. Hiding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He pulled up his phone, checking for security alerts. The screen darkened and Happy rolled his eyes when a call from an unknown number lit up the screen. Not too many spam callers had this number, but there were enough that the rule he’d set up after the Moving Day fiasco to answer every phone call was beginning to irritate him.
> 
> But rules were rules, so Happy answered the call.
> 
> “Hello?”
> 
> The level of enthusiasm that greeted his own indifferent greeting could only have come from one person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the beginning of the end! Hopefully y'all will be able to take a bit of a breather during these last two chapters. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the reaction comments on the last chapter! I know it was a little mean to end it there, but I wanted it to hit hard to be true to the character's emotions. The confrontation with Mark was the main climax (especially plot-wise), but that Tony POV chapter always felt like the biggest emotional climax in the story to me. 
> 
> BUT I don't want you to hang on that cliff for TOO long, so here's a Happy POV chapter where he starts to get clued in to what's been going on. =)

Happy stood in the lobby of the Tower, monitoring the new fingerprint sensors he’d had installed yesterday at the security entrance. Alid Ravik, a researcher in one of the robotics departments approached and stared Happy down, a subtle frown under his heavy mustache. With painstaking intentionality, he raised the middle finger of his right hand and flipped Happy the bird before turning it around around the placing the finger on the touch pad to his right.

Happy rolled his eyes and took yet another moment to regret letting people choose which finger to use when they were logging the new prints into the system. Nearly 30% of the workers had gone with the middle finger as some sort of protest at the new security measures. They hadn’t been told the reason for the new security measures—Tony’s disappearance and the foul play at the gala had been kept as quiet as possible. Stark Industries workers had no idea that Happy was scared to death of that face-cloaking technology sneaking past F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s sensors in the building. She hadn’t been able to uncover the deception over third-party videos, so there was a chance her on-site facial recognition programs would let a villain wearing Tony’s face waltz right up to any floor and cause a level eight security breach. Which was totally unacceptable.

The sensor dinged green, and the security guard on duty passed Ravik through the till. Happy nodded cordially at him as Ravik grabbed his bag from the conveyor belt where it had been scanned, glad at least to see that Ravik’s security badge was fully visible as it should be.

Three more employees made it through the sensor successfully—only one of the three using the blatant middle finger. He rolled his eyes when they left, but it didn’t really matter. As long as the Tower was secure, the people safe inside it could be as pissed as they wanted. Call him paranoid; call it an inconvenience; it was Happy’s job, and it was one he intended to excel at.

That was also why window screens had either been replaced or added to every room in the Tower and cameras added to every exit and entrance, watching for those ridiculously tiny fly bots. Happy wasn’t quite sure how to handle those. No doubt Tony would redo everything when he got back, but that was fine. Happy’s stopgap measures would be there until he did. 

He pulled up his phone, checking for security alerts. The screen darkened and Happy rolled his eyes when a call from an unknown number lit up the screen. Not too many spam callers had this number, but there were enough that the rule he’d set up after the Moving Day fiasco to answer every phone call was beginning to irritate him.

But rules were rules, so Happy answered the call.

“Hello?”

The level of enthusiasm that greeted his own indifferent greeting could only have come from one person.

“Happy? Happy, oh my God, I’m so glad you answered! You’ve got to come and get us. It’s Peter. Peter Parker.”

Happy had started running to the elevator bank at the first word. He jabbed the call button over and over as he responded.

“Peter! What’s happening? Where are you? Is Tony with you?”

After a few seconds of coughing, Peter croaked out. His voice sounded odd. Like the Peter he knew, then all garbled and deeper. “Yeah, and he’s in bad shape. We need a med evac now. They might have followed the helicopter, but I don’t know. My senses are all off.”

“Helicopter? You’re in a helicopter?” Happy asked as he pushed into the next open elevator, glaring and shaking his head at an employee who almost joined him. He pushed the button for floor nineteen. Pepper was in a meeting there, and she needed to know about this stat. She’d been holding herself and the company together in the week since Tony’s disappearance, and she’d probably be surprised to see Happy barging in since she didn’t exactly know that Happy had been paying extra close attention to the location and participants of all her meetings. Just until Tony got back and they figured this mess out.

“No. We’re somewhere in Virginia,” came Peter’s voice over the crackly connection. “Allegheny mountains. Can you track the signal from this phone?”

“You think I know how to work all that tech shit?” F.R.I.D.A.Y. could probably track the call, but her voice command features didn’t activate in these elevators until floor thirty as a security precaution. He’d grab Pepper first, then get to F.R.I.D.A.Y. “Just, give me a minute. Hold on. _Do not _hang up.”

The elevator doors slid open silently and twenty seconds later, Happy burst into conference room Boron.

Heads around the conference table turned around in surprised, including a strawberry blonde one.

“Happy?” Pepper asked, standing. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry,” Happy blurted out, rushing over to her and grabbing her briefcase. “Personal emergency. We’ll have to reschedule.”

He tugged on her arm to guide her out of the room, but she subtly slid it from his grasp, stepping back and pushing her chair in. “Apologies,” she said to the room, “but something has come up. I’ll email you the time of the rescheduled meeting later this week.”

Happy speed-walked to the elevator while Pepper followed, maintaining silence until they were alone in the elevator, heading up to the personal floors.

“Happy, what’s going on?” Pepper asked. “I assume there’s a good reason for interrupting my meeting.”

“I’ve got Peter on the phone right now.”

“What? Peter? Is Tony with him? Are they okay?”

Probably, although since he hadn’t heard anything from the phone in at least a minute, he couldn’t be sure. He changed the call to speaker mode, and a loud, rhythmic static filled the elevator. Damn, had they lost the signal? No, wait, was that the kid _breathing_? Geez, he sounded like a chain smoker on life support.

“Kid, you still there?” Happy asked, half-fearing he wasn’t going to get an answer.

“Yeah.”

“Good. You’re on speaker with me and F.R.I.D.A.Y. and Pepper Potts.”

“Oh, hi, Ms. Potts.”

“Hello, Peter. It’s good to hear your voice. Is Tony with you?” Her voice was perfectly collected, but she was wringing her hands as she spoke.

“Yeah, he’s here too.”

A gentle ding indicated that they’d passed level thirty and F.R.I.D.A.Y. was active.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.,” Happy nearly shouted, “can you track the phone call I’m getting right now?”

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Hogan,” came F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s cool response.

“Are you safe right now?” Pepper asked.

“I think so,” came the very hesitant answer. “But I told Happy already. We need a med evac. Soon.”

The elevator opened onto the penthouse floor, and Happy and Pepper walked into the living room. Happy immediately reached for his laptop and sat at the couch, the phone next to him, while Pepper start pacing nearby.

“Can I talk to Tony for a minute?” she asked.

A few seconds of hesitation. “He’s not awake right now, but he’s fine. He’s still breathing.”

If the kid was worried about breathing, the med evac was more urgent than he was making it sound. That was a pretty low bar. Pepper apparently had the same though.

“How bad is it? What does medical need to know?”

“Mr. St—Tony,” the kid stopped short, then continued. “He got shot. Three times, but I wrapped them up. Leg, side, and back. He’s unconscious, but I can hear his heartbeat and breathing.”

Something about that sentence bothered Happy, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what.

“Okay, I’ll call Cho right now and keep her updated,” Pepper said, pulling out her phone.

“And what about you, kid?” Happy said, taking over the information gathering as he booted up the computer. “I assume you need medical too? Did you get shot?”

“No,” Peter’s shaky voice assured, “Just him. But he shouldn’t have. He thought he was me. Made him think that…he should have just kept…kept his mouth shut.”

Okay, that was all nonsense. Not that Happy blamed the kid for being a little panicked. He’d obviously been through some shit in the last three weeks. And even more in the last few hours by the sound of it.

“Just breathe, kid,” Happy said, trying to calm him down. “He’ll be fine.”

“Maybe.”

“He’s a stubborn bastard. He’ll pull through. Same as you.”

“No, I didn’t kill…the guy that shot him…I should have. Mark…Mark Carpaccio…He was trying to shoot me…wanted Afghanistan 2.0…wish he’d shot me…but he’s still alive…I left him there alive.”

Happy was a little grateful when another coughing fit broke off the kid’s panicked rant. The bit about Afghanistan 2.0 matched the ransom call they’d found after Tony had disappeared—Happy shuddered to think what that really meant.

“You did good, kid,” Happy said when the coughing stopped. “Whatever happened, you did good.”

“You don’t…know that.”

“I do, kid. I really do,” Happy said. Now take a few deeps breaths. Calm down. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will find you any second now.” He logged into his account.

“Can’t breathe…hard to breathe. I think…oxygen ran out.”

More partial nonsense, but this tidbit was more concerning than confusing.

“The oxygen ran out? What does that mean? You guys sealed up somewhere or something?”

“No. I had an oxygen tank…for pneumonia.”

What kind of place were they being held that let them get pneumonia but also gave them medical attention?

F.R.I.D.A.Y. chose that moment to bring up a map with a blinking circle somewhere over Virginia, mostly over mountains. After days of searching the entire world for his missing boss—and even longer searching for the kid—that circle was the most beautiful thing Happy had ever seen. A huge smile broke out across his face.

“Yeah, we’ve got you now. F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s located you within a ten-mile radius. Somewhere in the Allegheny mountains, just like you said. Do you see any landmarks or anything that would help us get closer?”

“We’re at a…ranger station,” Peter said. “A really old one…Vines growing…all over it.”

“Perfect. That’s super helpful.”

“Oh, and I think…the helicopter’s probably still…on fire in the woods. We’re close, so…use that as a smoke signal.”

Happy was still trying to formulate a response to the fact that they’d apparently crashed a helicopter after being shot when Pepper walked over to the couch, her phone held away from her ear.

“Cho said she’ll have two emergency teams to the helipad in twenty minutes. We can split up to search the area. James is in D.C., but I’ll let him know what’s going on, so he can meet us back here.”

“You hear that, kid?” Happy said, smile still on his face. “We’re coming to get you guys. Just hold tight. We’ll be there within the hour.”

“Okay…should I hang up now?”

“No, stay on the line,” Happy said, closing the laptop and standing up. “Let us know if anything changes. I’m taking you off speaker though.”

Pepper was already gone, probably arranging pilots or something. Happy grabbed a bluetooth piece from the electronics cabinet and slotted it into his ear.

“I don’t know how long…the phone will last…” Peter said. “It might die.”

“That’s fine. We’ll be able to find you whatever happens. Just don’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t plan to.”

Switching the phone settings to bluetooth amplified the constant grating sound of Peter’s harsh breathing straight into Happy’s ear. Just about the most uncomfortable thing to be listening to, but at least it meant the kid wasn’t dead.

Happy headed up to the helipad, ready to supervise whoever was up there and then jump on one of the choppers himself.

“Is May okay?”

Peter sudden question made Happy startle in the elevator.

“What? Yeah, she is. I’m sure Pepper’s calling her to fill her in right now. She’ll be here when you get back.”

“And MJ?”

MJ, MJ, did Happy know an MJ? He knew enough to take a guess.

“She that girl who got grabbed with you at school?”

“Yeah. Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” Happy said, stepping out onto the windy helipad. “Tony got to her maybe an hour after you got grabbed. She’s fine. Back at school and everything.”

“Good.”

And that was the last of the conversation for the next twenty minutes. Happy muted himself so he could yell out orders and load up the choppers. He assigned the various ranger stations F.R.I.D.A.Y. had located in the given radius to the teams, and they were off the ground in fifteen minutes, Happy having assigned himself with emergency team two. Rhodey was on his way back, but was at least an hour out. He’d have to be part of the Tower welcoming committee, along with Cho and May.

Ten minutes into the flight, the raspy breathing in his ear cut off suddenly, and Happy spent a few frantic seconds trying to get Peter’s attention before realizing the call had been dropped. The kid’s phone must have died.

Forty-five minutes after that, Happy was in a helicopter hovering over a decrepit-looking ranger station about a quarter mile from the smoking remains of a large, military-grade helicopter. Happy had marked the crash location on the map to investigate later, but for now they were prepping to lower down the emergency medical teams with the stretchers since there was nowhere to land the chopper. But before they dropped down, Happy was going down first to check things out.

Rappelling down the rope was much faster than he remembered it being in training years ago, but he unhooked himself at the bottom, pulled his gun out of its holster, and moved toward the building. Excessive? Perhaps, but Happy was never one to skimp on caution.

The small, cabin-like building looked ready to fall apart, the wooden walls rotting off in chunks in some places. The dirt path leading up to the door was disturbed with footprints and drag marks.

He’d half expected a welcome party from the kid on the doorstep, but not a soul was in sight. He pushed the door open cautiously, wondering if they’d be hiding inside.

There was only one large room—not many places to hide—and Happy saw Tony immediately, slumped against a filing cabinet next to the wall with his arms wrapped around his stomach. A satellite phone with wires poking out the back lay on the floor near him. He was breathing hard, but he was awake, looking at Happy with disbelief over the oxygen mask the kid had mentioned.

He didn’t look shot. Definitely not as bad as the kid had made it sound. The jumpsuit he was wearing was burned in a few places, but that was all.

Happy straightened from his slight crouch and tucked the gun away.

“Hey, Happy,” Tony croaked out.

Happy’s response was a completely involuntary one. A very irritated sounding, “Laguardia? Really?”

He wasn’t really angry. His brain had just popped back to the last time he’d seen Tony, when he been tricked so easily he’d considered turning in his badge. Pepper had convinced him Tony would fire him when he got back if he found it fitting. Happy still found it hard to believe Tony had done something as stupid as turn himself in. They must have caught him at a bad moment. Or an impulsive moment. Or a bored moment. Historically, there were a lot of moments that inspired Tony to do stupid crap. And yet he always managed to come out the other side.

Tony’s eyebrows furrowed at the LaGuardia comment. He didn’t look upset though, more like he had no idea what the hell Happy was talking about. Happy moved closer, wondering where the kid was, when he caught sight of a prone body that had been concealed by the filing cabinet.

Another Tony.

Happy’s gun was out faster than he could process it, trained on the first Tony he’d seen as he studied the second one. Now _that_ was the shot-up Tony he’d expected to find. Prone on the floor, blood-stained bandages wrapping him up, out cold.

But why were there two of them? Had Tony been taken by someone who could clone people? Were these both clones who had escaped? Was the real Tony Stark still stuck in a lab somewhere? How many clones had escaped? Oh god, how many Tony Starks were wandering around the world right now, and how many of them was Happy legally or morally responsible for tracking down and protecting? All the questions made his head spin. He was so not getting paid enough for this.

“Where’s Peter?” Happy choked out, trying to think of what questions would get to the bottom of this mess the fastest. “Why the hell are there two of you?”

The medical team buzzed in his ear, asking for an update, but Happy ignored them. Good thing he hadn’t called them down yet.

“Oh, I forgot,” Tony said. His hand moved slowly toward his face, watching Happy as if he worried he’d get trigger-happy, and pulled the oxygen mask down around his neck. He reached up again, this time peeling his entire face off in a thin sheet of something electronic that sparked angrily as it came away. Happy blinked as the face of his boss morphed into the face of a very tired-looking and kind of burned Spider-kid.

“Well that’s going to give me nightmares,” Happy said bluntly. That face-cloaking tech had to go. It was a security nightmare.

“Join the club,” the kid said, pulling the oxygen mask back up over his own face.

Happy put the gun away again, pausing only to gesture to the unconscious Tony and ask, “You sure that’s the real one?”

“Yeah,” the kid said, not bothering to elaborate. “Did you bring a med team?”

“Oh yeah, let me call them down.” He pressed the ear piece’s button. “Location is secure. Send the teams down.”

He moved over to Tony to feel if he was breathing.

“He was awake a little bit ago,” Peter said. “But he was confused…It was right after…the phone died.”

Happy turned his attention back to the wiry mess of the satellite phone.

“You fix this up yourself?”

“Yeah. One last lab project…But this one worked.”

The kid still wasn’t making a lot of sense, but Happy didn’t push.

The first medical team walked in the door with a stretcher. Happy waved them over, and Peter immediately redirected them.

“Get Mr. Star—get him first. He’s shot. I’m fine.”

Happy’s eyes narrowed. That was debatable. Every time a tiny cough passed the thin line of his lips, the kid winced. Up this close, Happy noticed that his hands were pretty badly burned too, much worse than his face.

Happy knelt next to him, giving the med team room to work on Tony.

“You’re not looking so hot yourself. How the hell did you get an oxygen tank in here with you?”

“Long story…Can’t breathe well…without it.”

“Broken ribs?” Happy said, nodding to where Peter still had his hands wrapped around his lower ribs. “They hurt, but don’t squeeze them or they’ll move around.”

“Not broken,” Peter gasped out, but he loosened his grip anyway. “They’re gone…nothing to move around.”

Even making no sense, the ominous implications of that statement hung heavily in the air.

“What, like _gone_ gone? What do you mean gone?” Happy could hear the squeaky winch lowering the second med team down outside, but he pulled back Peter’s arm himself and lifted the white shirt underneath the open jumpsuit he was wearing.

An old bandage had come loose on the kid’s right side. He was skinny enough now Happy could count every rib. Except for a gaping, seeping wound where he was pretty sure the last two should be. Bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed it down.

“Kid, you should lie down or something.”

But he shook his head. “Harder to breathe that way.”

Peter readjusted slightly, biting his lip as he did, and Happy caught a glint of metal underneath his shirt.

He moved fabric aside to see a chain, covered in bloody spikes laying against his stomach. It had scratched up his side something awful, but that wasn’t the worst part.

The bile rose again, even stronger, and Happy had to swallow three times before he could find words. Not even very coherent or helpful words. Just any words at all.

“There’s a chain going into your side. I don’t even—what the hell happened?” Happy fumbled. “And that’s why you said they were gone? God, I think I’m going to throw up. Or have a heart attack right here.”

Had he ripped himself out of some sort of restraint? What the hell kind of person was this Mark guy they’d ended up with?

Peter dragged his shirt back down, covering it, but Happy was fairly certain that sight was never going to leave him.

“And I thought…Tony’s bedside manner was awful,” he said quietly.

“It is, kid. The absolute worst.”

The med team burst in the door behind him, and Happy stood, giving them room to maneuver Peter gently to the floor. “Said he’s got pneumonia—there’s an oxygen tank over there—and he’s missing—” Happy faltered. “Just check his ribs. Check them first.”

And then Happy didn’t know what to do with himself. Maybe this is what it had been like for Rhodey when he found Tony in Afghanistan, wandering in the desert, a new chunk of metal embedded in his body that hadn’t been there before. Maybe that had been something like this. Maybe this was worse. God, he needed a drink. He needed a drink with Rhodey as soon as things were settled so they could compare notes.

A member of the three-person team checked Peter’s oxygen tank and called out, “This is running on empty.”

Someone else pulled the mask off and put a sensor on Peter’s finger.

“Yeah, it was feeling empty,” Peter said. “But it’s okay…Spiders don’t need oxygen…pretty sure…we can survive in…a sealed jar for days.”

“For the love of god, please don’t ever test that theory,” Happy said, still reeling from the shock of the kid’s condition. “You are not actually a spider.”

“I _am _Spider-Man.”

Not you, too, Happy thought, remember Tony and the day of that fateful press conference.

Maybe Peter could read his thoughts, because he reassured Happy. “But I’m Peter Parker today.”

Happy smiled at whatever that was supposed to mean.

“Stark said he wanted a…cheeseburger when we got saved…Said I could…have twelve.”

“I’m sure he did, kid. I’ll get those first thing.” But what had bothered Happy during the phone call suddenly became clear. Since when had the kid called Tony “Tony,” like he had over the phone. And now just he’d called him “Stark”? What had happened to the classic, undying “Mr. Stark” that was so frequently uttered Happy sometimes heard in his sleep?

“Hey,” Happy asked as casually as he could manage. “Can those face masks layer up? Like, could you be wearing another one right now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I’m not…We only had two.”

“Can I check?”

“What? Why?”

“It’s just…you haven’t called him Mr. Stark once. You keep changing it. You just called him Stark like you think you’re Nick Fury. It doesn’t sound like you.”

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say because Peter’s eyes immediately widened and his breathing quickened. He looked like he’d been caught in a lie. Was Happy still missing something here? Was this the real Peter?

“It’s me, I swear…Happy, it’s me…but you knew…does everyone know…Mark knew…He figured it out…oh god, he shot him…because of that name…but it’s really me, Happy…me with a new name.”

He’d grabbed onto Happy’s forearm in his panic, squeezing so hard that it hurt. Definitely felt like super strength, so that was something towards his identity at least.

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Happy grunted, prying at Peter’s surprisingly hot hand. “It’s not a big deal.” Still a little fishy, but they’d deal with it later. It was apparently a sore spot for the kid.

“It is a big deal!” Peter yelled, or as near to yelling as he could manage. “It got him shot!” But he loosened his grip.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Happy said, but we’ll figure it out later.”

One of the medics stepped forward. “I need you to step back, sir. You’re agitating the situation.”

“I’m trying,” Happy said, still prying at the kid’s fingers.

“Peter,” the medic said, “Please try and calm down. Take deep, slow breaths.”

“Can’t,” he gasped.

“Just try.”

The first med team stood, having already loaded Tony onto a stretcher, straps holding him down for transport to the helicopter. They moved around the team with Peter while Happy and a medic tried to get Peter to loosen his grip.

“Please, Happy…it’s me…I’m more…more than that name…It’s me.”

At least the kid wasn’t gripping his wrist anymore, his taut fingers were just stuck to the material of Happy’s shirt sleeve.

Wait a minute—stuck? Not gripping the material in a fist. Each extended finger was stuck to the material it touched like super glue.

“Okay, okay, it’s you! You’re so damn sticky no one can get you off. Who else would you be?”

Peter’s sticky fingers finally relaxed, and Happy stepped back while the medics hefted Peter onto a stretcher.

They started connecting the straps that would keep him secure during the ascent into the helicopter when Peter suddenly threw his head back, trying to see in the corner where Tony had been.

“Where is he? I can’t hear…his heart’s gone.”

“He’s on the helicopter, kid. They’ll move you there in a minute too, so just relax.”

He closed his eyes, some of the fight draining out of him. “He got shot,” he muttered. “Take care of him.”

“He’ll be fine. He’s a tough bugger to kill.”

With the kid resting, or at least not actively struggling, Happy tuned in to the chatter of the med team that had been buzzing over his ears.

“Blue fingernails. Possible cyanosis setting in. Or hypothermia.”

“He seems feverish too.”

“Holy shit, that’s his oxygen level? How is he even conscious? That tank was definitely spent, so let’s get him back to the jet and on a new supply.”

“Sounds like fluid buildup in the lungs, too.”

Happy moved outside and hooked himself up to a harness.

Once on the helicopter, he moved toward Tony’s stretcher, still surrounded by three medics, and was surprised to find the man semi-conscious.

“You’re awake?”

“They keep poking my bullet holes,” Tony mumbled with a frown. He grit his teeth, then closed his eyes with a sigh. “Kid’s okay then? They said so, but did you see him?”

“Yeah. A little rough around the edges, but he’ll be fine.”

Maybe that was sugar-coating it a little, but Tony probably knew more than Happy did about the kid’s condition.

“Thank god,” Tony whispered. Then, “What a nightmare.”

Happy couldn’t help himself.

“You want to know what’s a nightmare?” he threw out, as casually as if they were talking over coffee. “Terminal B at LaGuardia. Pretty much any time of day.”

Tony gave a single chuckle and winced.

“Knew I’d hear about that later.”

“For the rest of your life, boss.”

An attendant moved Happy aside then to put an IV in the crook of Tony’s elbow and ask him some questions, and Happy too the opportunity to step away and call Rhodey.

The man answered on the first ring.

“Happy, what’s going on?”

“We got ‘em, Rhodey. Right where they said they’d be.”

“Both of ‘em? How are they?”

Possibly still dying? Missing bones? Too many extra pieces of metal where they didn’t belong?

“Looking a little rough, but they’ve got the med teams now,” Happy said, opting for optimism. “Look, are you at the Tower yet?”

“Yeah, walking in the lobby now.”

“Good, you tell Pepper we’re on our way back. All of us. I’m going to go sit with the kid.”

“Will do. What’s your ETA?”

Happy relayed the question to the pilot.

“He says about 25 minutes.”

“Sounds good. I’ll meet you at the tower then.”

Happy hung up, then took a seat with a good vantage point of the whole chopper, waiting for the med team to bring the kid up to take everyone home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come hang out on Tumblr! I'm [TheAssay](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) over there.


	36. Embrace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As soon as he was properly inside, Peter only had eyes for the second stretcher a mere three feet from where his own was finally placed.
> 
> He could see the man clearly. Some of his restraints had been removed to allow the med team better access to his wounds, which somehow didn’t look as bad now that it wasn’t Peter’s job to tend them. But the more miraculous thing was that his eyes were open. Clouded with pain, constantly crinkling as he winced, but open.

The frigid mountain winds stole the remnants of Peter’s breath as he was raised into the helicopter. He’d felt the same claws of winter after he’d crashed the helicopter in the woods trying to land it and had dragged his mentor to the ranger station, but the claws had no hold now. Within a minute he was warm inside the helicopter, surrounded once again by a half-dozen medical personnel bustling around both stretchers inserting IVs, changing bandages, and a number of other things besides that Peter couldn’t find in himself to care about.

As soon as he was properly inside, he only had eyes for the second stretcher a mere three feet from where his own was finally placed.

He could see the man clearly. Some of his restraints had been removed to allow the med team better access to his wounds, which somehow didn’t look as bad now that it wasn’t Peter’s job to tend them. But the more miraculous thing was that his eyes were open. Clouded with pain, constantly crinkling as he winced, but open.

“Mr. St—” Peter started, then immediately cut himself off. He still didn’t have a new name for the man yet. Tony? Iron Man? Stark?

“Welcome aboard, kid,” his mentor said with a half-smile, his head turning toward Peter. “Glad you don’t have to pilot this time?”

Peter let out a breathy laugh. Glad didn’t even begin to cover it. He was ecstatic. Thrilled. Ready to cry tears of joy because for once he could just lay here and not have to be doing things and saving people.

He wasn’t sure he could actually do anything besides lay here even if someone asked him too, anyway. A bone-wearying heaviness he’d been keeping at bay since waking up in the Crucible was finally creeping up through his bones. Breathing still hurt, his side with the missing ribs ached, and his hands felt like they were on fire from when he’d had to maneuver his mentor out of the burning wreckage of the helicopter that he’d crashed like an idiot.

Peter pushed that unpleasant memory to the back of his mind. He was never piloting another aircraft again. First steering the plane over Coney Island frmo the wings, and now crashing a helicopter from the inside? It seemed flying really wasn’t his thing.

The door closed, and the helicopter tilted away, taking off toward home.

“Where’s your oxygen?” his mentor asked, his brows burrowing together in concern.

“Ran out,” was all Peter said. He was feeling a little dizzy, even without much exertion, and a lot drowsy, but he willed himself awake because his mentor was finally awake. No way was he falling asleep now and worrying him.

“It’s good to see your real face,” the man said.

That was a weird thing to say…except…Peter _had _been wearing the face cloak the whole time, hadn’t he? Even when he thought Mr. Sta—his mentor was dying. That must have been…weird.

“I forgot I was wearing the mask,” Peter explained. “It freaked Happy out…to find two of you.”

“No wonder. He can barely handle one of me.”

Peter could only handle one too. He was never putting that face cloak on again. He was burning them both as soon as they got back. Wait, did they even have the masks with them anymore? What had happened to the pillowcase of stuff after Peter had dragged it to the station?

“Wait,” Peter said, looking around for the bag. “Did anyone get the pillowcase?”

“Was it red?” Happy’s gruff voice next to Peter startled him.

“Yeah. It had Iron Man on it.”

“We saw it, but I don’t think anyone grabbed it. I’ll tell them to get it when we send in another team to investigate that and the helicopter.”

Peter rested his head back on the stretcher. That was good enough for him.

He looked over to his mentor and reached his hand out across the aisle between the stretchers. It only took Tony few seconds to realize what Peter wanted. He reached out his own hand and grasped Peter’s hand. Their hands hung, strung between the two stretchers like a suspension bridge.

The contact stung his burns, but the connection was calming. He wanted most to be sitting next to his mentor’s bedside, holding his hand. He’s pretty sure the man did that for him in the Crucible when he was too sick to really remember. But Peter was still strapped down to his own stretcher, so this would have to do.

“No more trading places, okay?” Peter whispered.

“Deal,” the man said quickly and easily. Then, “You did good.”

Peter couldn’t help but snort.

“You’re only saying that because you missed the part where I crashed the chopper.”

The man’s eyes fell closed for a few seconds, but he dragged them open and shook his head. “Still did good.”

Peter knew what the fresh burns on the man’s legs from the helicopter fire looked like and begged to differ, but now wasn’t the time.

His mentor’s eyes dragged shut again but this time they stayed close. His grip on Peter’s fingers loosened, and Peter tensed, craning his neck to get a better view and forcing himself to tune into the med team working around the man’s bed.

They weren’t panicked. Focused, yes. Saying big medical words in worried tones? Yes. But there were no electric paddles or panicked shouting. They seemed content just to let the man sleep.

A medic next to Peter him gently pushed his head back to the stretcher, and Peter closed his eyes and let them, although he kept his grip on his mentor’s hand. A few seconds later, someone slipped a fresh oxygen mask over his face, diminishing the dizzying feeling he’d had. The cool air blowing in made Peter sigh in relief.

Even through the bustle, if he focused he could feel the mostly steady thump of his mentor’s heart, beating away stubbornly against his palm.

Peter turned his head, where Happy was sitting with a look of grumpy concern etched on his face as he watched his boss.

“Thanks for coming to get us,” Peter told him, not sure if Happy could hear him through the mask.

Happy looked down and smiled a little before nodding.

“All part of the job.”

He looked back to the other man, still clearly worried. Maybe Peter could put him at ease. He pulled the oxygen mask down, so Happy could hear him clearly.

“He’s not okay, but he’s going to be.”

Happy smiled and nodded.

“You both are, kid.”

A nearby hand pulled the mask from Peter’s hands and put it back on his face.

“You keep that mask on, young man. Doctor’s orders.”

Peter nodded, his attention drawn back to the bustle in the chopper. The medics around Tony’s stretcher had fallen into a pattern of watching. The medics around Peter’s bed seemed much more worried, which Peter thought ridiculous. He wasn’t the one who’d been shot three times.

One of them prodded painfully at his missing ribs with freezing cold hands before applying a new bandage. Another one seemed wholly dedicated to reading out numbers from the sensor on Peter’s fingers that seemed to baffle the others. Must be something about his weird spider biology throwing them off.

He closed his eyes, relishing in the new oxygen and the newfound opportunity to actually relax.

“Oh shit,” Happy said suddenly, and Peter snapped his eyes open again. Happy was pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket. “I told May I’d call her! You want to talk to her?” he asked, looking to Peter for permission.

A single nod and Happy was dialing. Peter could hear the ring tone if he focused. It was replaced by May’s worried voice after barely two rings.

“Happy? What’s going on?”

“We got them, May. I told you I’d call when we did, and they’re both sitting right next to me on a helicopter right now.

“Oh my god, are they okay?” Her voice sounded tinny and far away, but Peter could easily imagine the worried expression on her face as she spoke.

“A little worse for the wear, but we brought med teams. Are you at the Tower ye?”

“Almost. Maybe ten minutes.”

The prospect of seeing May so soon brought tears to Peter’s eyes. He still hadn’t quite embraced the idea that they’d been rescued. That they were going home. That he’d get to see May again, and MJ and Ned and everyone else he’d been away from for so long. That is wasn’t just him and Iron Man against the world anymore.

“You’ll beat us there then,” Happy said. “We’re 25 minutes out.”

“Is Peter awake? I need to talk to him.”

“He’s on oxygen, so he can’t talk, but he can at least listen to your voice. Let me put you on speaker.”

Happy changed the setting, then held out the phone closer to Peter’s ear.

“Okay, May. He can hear you now.”

“Peter? Peter, it’s May.” Her much louder voice filled the air around him with warmth. “I’m going to meet you at the Tower. I’ll see you so soon and I’m so glad you’re okay. I love you so much, honey.”

Peter smiled behind the mask. She wouldn’t be able to hear him now, with the oxygen mask and the ambient noise, but he’d see her in 25 minutes. They’d have a lot to talk about then.

“He smiled, May,” Happy reported on the phone, switching it off of speaker mode. “He’s glad to hear you…Yeah, we’ll meet you there.”

He hung up the phone and Peter closed his eyes again. They were both worse for the wear, as Happy had put it, but they were free. The word felt odd to even think, but it was true.

Free.

Free from the Crucible and Mark’s insanity. Free from the other stories that had threatened to rewrite theirs. Free to go home, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that brings this Whumptober story to a close, in large part because I’ve run out of Whumptober prompts that I can feasibly weave into the narrative.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and commenting and enjoying and just, for everything. I couldn’t have asked for a better fanfiction debut.
> 
> As previously mentioned, I have a recovery fic planned out that starts up pretty much exactly where this story leaves off. It will have less whump and far more comfort (our boys have earned it!), and it will hopefully provide more of a long-term resolution to this massive story. However, I expect it’s going to turn into another 100k+ whale of a story, so I’m not opening that can of worms until I have plenty of time to wrangle them. That means you’re going to have to wait, like, six months for that story, just like a real book’s sequel, haha. I promised myself I would redraft my original novel before starting another huge fanfiction story, so that’s my main goal for the next little while.
> 
> Feel free to leave recovery prompts in the comments below that I can use for inspiration. Or let me know tags I should add to make the story more searchable or any other constructive criticism you have for the story. 
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](https://theassay.tumblr.com/) and/or follow the “Hero’s Alloy” series to be updated when I finally start the next fic.
> 
> Thanks for reading! That’s all, folks!


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